Current Federal Legislative Priorities 

EARN IT Act (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act)
(S 1207) & (HR 2732)

• Clarifies Congress never intended CDA 230 to give internet platforms blanket immunity from liability for facilitating CSAM—as US courts have unfortunately ruled. 
• Gives victims of CSAM a path to justice and hold platforms accountable that knowingly allow for the distribution and sharing of child sexual abuse material. 
• Renames “child pornography” “child sexual abuse material” in federal statute. 
• Enhances tools for the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and requires reporting of child sex trafficking and online enticement. 
• Creates a federal Online Child Exploitation Prevention Commission to establish best practices and recommendations to inform policy, the judiciary, and law (enforcement community (SENATE ONLY). 

STATUS: (S1207- Passed Senate Judiciary Committee on May 15, 2023

Sens. Graham (R-SC) & Blumenthal (D-CT) (S 1207)

Reps. Wagner (R-MO) & Garcia (D-TX) (HR 2732)

Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)
(S 1409)

• Requires social media companies provide safeguards and tools for minors and parents and enable the strongest safety settings by default. 
• Creates a duty of care for online platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to children. 
• Establishes a transparency standard by providing academic and public interest groups access to platforms data to review the harms identified and platforms responses. 

STATUS:  Passed Senate Commerce Committee on July 30, 2024
KOSA Supporters (see here)

Project Safe Childhood Act
(S 1170)

• Modernizes DOJ’s Project Safe Childhood Program to address child sexual exploitation 
• Require U.S. Attorneys to create high-priority, victim-centered, and district-specific targeting plans for 
• federal law enforcement to identify perpetrators abusing children. 
• Requires the U.S. Attorney General to develop best practices for addressing these cases 
• Improves LE coordination with the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces 
• Provides funding for 20 DOJ prosecutors dedicated to child sexual exploitation cases. 

STATUS: - Passed Senate Judiciary Committee on May 15, 2023; PASSED Senate on October 24, 2023

SHIELD Act (Stopping Harmful Image Exploitation and Limiting Distribution Act) (S 412)

• Establishes a criminal offense to knowingly mail or distribute, or threaten to distribute an intimate visual depiction of an individual without their consent 
• Establishes a criminal offense for the distribution of a visual depiction of a nude minor with the intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade the minor to arouse any person. 
• Subjects a violator to a fine, prison term of five years, or both.

STATUS: Passed Senate on 7/10/2024

Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (TAKE IT DOWN Act)

• Criminalizing the publication of NCII in interstate commerce. The bill makes it unlawful for a person to knowingly publish NCII on social media and other online platforms. NCII is defined to include realistic, computer-generated pornographic images and videos that depict identifiable, real people. The bill also clarifies that a victim consenting to the creation of an authentic image does not mean that the victim has consented to its publication. 
• Protecting good faith efforts to assist victims. The bill permits the good faith disclosure of NCII, such as to law enforcement, in narrow cases.  
• Requiring websites to take down NCII upon notice from the victim. Social media and other websites would be required to have in place procedures to remove NCII, pursuant to a valid request from a victim, within 48 hours. Websites must also make reasonable efforts to remove copies of the images. The FTC is charged with enforcement of this section.  
• Protecting lawful speech. The bill is narrowly tailored to criminalize knowingly publishing NCII without chilling lawful speech. The bill conforms to current first amendment jurisprudence by requiring that computer-generated NCII meet a “reasonable person” test for appearing to realistically depict an individual. 

STATUS: Introduced June 18, 2024

STOP CSAM ACT of 2023 -  (Strengthening Transparency and Obligations to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment Act of 2023)

(S 1199)

• Requires mandatory child abuse reporting, by federal grant recipients that provide services to children and encourages states to enact laws requiring child abuse reporting by child-serving organizations;
• Expands protections for child victims and witnesses in federal court; facilitates restitution for victims of child exploitation, human trafficking, sexual assault, and crimes of violence; and empowers victims by making it easier for them to ask tech companies to remove child sexual abuse material and related imagery from their platforms and by creating an administrative penalty for the failure to comply with a removal request. 
• Holds tech companies accountable and encourages transparency by expanding the federal civil cause of action for child victims to also permit victims of online child sexual exploitation to bring a civil cause of action against tech platforms and app stores that promoted or facilitated the exploitation. 
• Strengthens current CyberTipline reporting requirements; requires large tech companies that are subject to the CyberTipline statute to submit annual reports describing their efforts to promote a culture of safety for children on their platform; and further amends the CyberTipline statute to provide a variety of tools to promote compliance with the statute’s mandates.

COPPA 2.0 - Thee “Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act"

(S. 1418)

• Build on COPPA by prohibiting internet companies from collecting personal information from users who are 13 to 16 years old without their consent
• Ban targeted advertising to children and teens; 
• Revise COPPA’s “actual knowledge” standard, covering platforms that are “reasonably likely to be used” by children and protecting users who are “reasonably likely to be” children or minors;
• Create an “Eraser Button” for parents and kids by requiring companies to permit users to eliminate personal information from a child or teen when technologically feasible
• Establish a “Digital Marketing Bill of Rights for Teens” that limits the collection of personal information of teens;
• Establish a Youth Marketing and Privacy Division at the FTC.

STATUS: Introduced to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation May 3, 2023

The DEFIANCE Act, provides relief for victims harmed by non-consensual intimate digital forgeries, known as deepfakes.

STATUS: passed the Senate on July 23, 2024

EIE Report Language (2021)

EIE Authored/Submitted Reports (Request for Comments, Budget Language, White Papers)

• EIE-Provided Report Language in Federal Budget to Prosecute Obscenity (July 19, 2021)

World Congress: Child Dignity in the Digital World (2017)

EIE President Donna Rice Hughes was one of 120 invited world leaders invited to the World Congress in Rome, Italy to set the global agenda in the fight against online sexual child abuse in the digital world.

• Speech given by Pope Francis (French, English and Spanish)
• Declaration of Rome: Child Dignity in the Digital World (Oct 6, 2017)
• CHILD DIGNITY IN THE DIGITAL WORLD (website)
• Strategic Plan: Implementing the Declaration of Rome (15 October 2017)