Last week, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary amended and passed S.1080, which would require private messaging services, social media companies, and even cloud providers to report their users to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) if they find out about certain illegal drug sales. EFF opposes this bill, both in its original and amended form.
The bill, also called the Cooper Davis Act, laudably seeks to address the proliferation of illegally-made fentanyl and resulting overdose deaths in the United States. Unfortunately, the amended bill is still likely to result in a host of inaccurate reports to law enforcement by prodding Internet companies to trawl through users’ innocent conversations, including discussions about past drug use or treatment. This bill contains no warrant requirement, no required notice, and limited user protections, and deserves to be defeated on the Senate floor.
Although the bill does not explicitly require providers to seek out illegal activity by users, it walks up to that line by requiring reporting when providers obtain actual knowledge of this activity, and creating criminal penalties for failure to do so. S.1080 is modeled on existing law that requires providers to report actual knowledge of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to a group called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a quasi-governmental entity that later forwards on some reports to law enforcement.
Companies base some of their reporting on matches found by comparing digital signatures of images to an existing database of previously removed CSAM. Notably, this new bill requires reporting directly to the DEA, and the content at issue (drug sales) is markedly harder and more subjective to identify. While actual CSAM is unprotected by the First Amendment, mere discussion of drug use is protected speech. Due to the liability they would face for failing to report, some companies may overreport using content-scanning tools that […]
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