A New Senate Bill Battles Online Child Sexual Abuse, But It Could Give The Government its Long-Awaited Backdoor Into Your Messages
By: Jonathan Stormer Pezzi
Photo by Mueller /MSC
New York — A new bi-partisan Senate bill proposed to battle online child sexual exploitation has made waves in the worlds of technology and law enforcement. The reactions in each community, however, have been stark contrasts.
The EARN-IT Act was a bill proposed by a conglomerate of Senators from both parties, but the apparent leading co-authors are Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, and Massachusetts Democrat Richard Blumenthal.
The bill’s main idea is that technology companies could be held liable if their users post illegal content. This is largely to combat a serious online child abuse problem that has tormented federal investigators for years.
“Tech companies need to do better. The internet is infested with stomach-churning images of children who have been brutally assaulted & exploited. They suffer lifetimes of pain as photographs & videos endure online,” Mr. Blumenthal went on.
The act would establish a 19 member commission made to create a set of rules for internet companies to abide by, in attempt to deter and prohibit any child abuse.
The rules would need to be approved by 14 members of the committee and submitted to the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security, and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission for final approval, according to Issie Lapowsky of Protocol.
While the intentions of the bill are admirable on the surface, the potential unintended consequences of the legislation have sparked panic in the technological community.
A relatively constrained niche of technology journalists and concerned citizens have discussed the new bill in a series of articles, but the story has been largely drowned out by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
There are three matters mostly in debate.
The first is encryption — the method where information is converted into secret code that hides the information's real meaning. In other words, encryption helps protect the messages and data you send, whether for your ATM or your phone.
Although not specifically stated within the bill, some onlookers believe the act will give members of the justice department the ability to halt end-to-end encryption when deemed necessary, providing the government a back-door into personal information during an investigation.
The tug-of-war between government and tech companies has been a reoccurring theme for the last several years, notably in a case where Attorney General Barr requested Facebook provide information on encrypted Whats App messages to aid in investigations.
Senator Graham has hit back. "Facebook is talking about end-to-end encryption which means they go blind," Mr. Graham said. "We're not going to go blind and let this abuse go forward in the name of any other freedom."
Many tech companies see encryption as a civil liberties issue, protecting their users’ privacy from undue search by the government.
The second concern is that many in the tech world view the proposed committee as de-democratizing the internet. The new commission would essentially designate a checklist of what they allow on the internet. Although the list would be made to battle child exploitation, some experts warn that creating this checklist will hamper innovation of new platforms and create an undue burden on internet companies.
This bill will controversially disrupt something called Section 280 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that protects online companies from being punished for illegal content posted on their platforms. Under Section 280, the government comes after the actual perpetrators of crimes, but with the EARN IT Act, it could prosecute the internet companies where this criminal activity takes place. This move could make platforms take aggressive precautionary measures, pushing some to entirely gut their existing infrastructure and refrain from experimentation due to the liability.
The third worry is how effective this bill would actually be at fighting online child sexual abuse. Many in the tech world are not necessarily against taking action to prevent online child exploitation, but believe this bill will not combat it in the right way. Congress had recently passed another bill to combat sex trafficking online, with essentially the same strategy, known as FOSTA-SESTA. The results were not promising.
“[The law] threatens any website owner with up to 10 years in prison for hosting even one instance of prostitution-related content. As a result, sites like Craigslist removed their entire online personals sections. Sex workers who had previously been working as their own bosses were driven back onto the streets, often forced to work for pimps. Prostitution-related crime in San Francisco alone — including violence against workers — more than tripled,” according to tech reporter Casey Newton of The Verge.
Although the relationship has been strained, the tech community and the government have cooperated on many things in the past. Any further cooperation may be at risk with the passing of the EARN IT Act.
The ethical ambiguousness of the bill and its consequences has opened up the internet’s floodgates of opinion. Many have criticized the lawmakers for using child exploitation as a veil for their true motives: greater autonomy in investigations. Of course, the lawmakers vehemently deny this. The bill is still in the committee phases, but with the surprise passing of FOSTA-SESTA, fierce opposition from tech companies is expected. However, because of other dominating headlines, this story will not see the national attention it likely deserves.