“Bipartisan Bill Targets Online Spread of Child Sex Abuse Material”, The New York Times
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Legislation was introduced on Tuesday that would hold tech companies more responsible for an explosion in online child sexual abuse material and give law enforcement agencies more opportunity to gather evidence of crimes.
The bill, proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate, would require companies to retain information about illegal photos and videos found on their platforms for a longer period of time. Its sponsors said the bill was in response to a New York Times investigation, part of a continuing series, revealing that cases often went cold after businesses deleted the data.
Under the current law, tech companies are required to report the imagery to a federally designated clearinghouse and retain related information for 90 days. The bill would double that period and let companies hold on to the material even longer, provided it’s for the purpose of combating further harm. Explicit photos and videos of minors, often referred to as “child pornography,” are illegal to possess and must be reported to the authorities immediately.
Representative Anthony Gonzalez, an Ohio Republican who sponsored the bill, said it aimed to give chronically under-resourced investigators more time to gather evidence.
“The problem is that there’s just too much in the system,” he said. “There’s too big of a backlog for everybody to process and effectively prosecute and go after the criminals.”