The TAKE IT DOWN (“Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks” – Senate Bill 146/SB 146) Act is one of those legislative pushes that, on the face of it, make perfect sense – but upon further inspection reveal troubling potential for facilitating government overreach, and, yet another roundabout attack on encryption.
The “face” of TAKE IT DOWN is to make sure online content known as non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), including real, and that generated by AI tech, gets removed quickly.
The “further inspection,” however – as reputable digital rights campaigners previously pointed out – shows that the way it is drafted, the act “mandates a notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process.”
It is considered to be a way to “supplement” the DMCA.
But the bill has received a boost from First Lady Melania Trump, who, in her first public address since returning to the White House, spoke during a Capitol Hill event to say that she hoped her endorsement would help the proposal pass.
Melania Trump’s message, which reportedly received approval from “surprise guest” – House Speaker Mike Johnson, by means of his “enthusiastic nods” – is that making the bill into law is needed in order to stop “mean-spirited and hurtful online behavior.”
The first lady focused on the damage the online content of the kind the legislative proposal does to young people.
But beyond yet another take on the “think of the children” narrative lie deeper issues with the bill itself, and how it does or does not, work with declarative, and enshrined in previous law, US values concerning free speech.
Those with a notable track record of actively campaigning for those values suggest – not well.
In February, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) was among those warning that the TAKE IT DOWN Act, while addressing what it said were profoundly harmful acts (of publishing NDII) – also needed to be amended so that it rules out the possibility of being used as a way to usher in even more online censorship.
The way the bill is worded provides not only for dealing with NDII incidents – but also, “poses an unacceptable risk of censoring legal and constitutionally protected user speech that is not NDII and creates an existential threat to encrypted platforms,” CDT stated.
