Threatening Encryption, Senate Democrats Aid GOP War on Abortion

Why are supposedly pro-choice Senators supporting bills that would make it harder for abortion seekers to communicate privately? asks Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) at a hearing on Thursday, May 4, 2023. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) recently highlighted the crucial role of digital privacy in Americans’ access to abortion care. During an April 26 hearing about the devastating impact on Americans’ reproductive rights of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Sen. Durbin rightly noted that without robust privacy protections, abortion seekers leave a digital trail that can be used against them in states that have criminalized abortion. So why are he and his fellow committee Democrats aiding the GOP’s assault on abortion by supporting bills that threaten Americans’ ability to communicate privately about abortion care? Two bills introduced last month would expand online services’ potential liability for child safety offenses by their users: the EARN IT Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sen. Durbin’s own STOP CSAM Act. It’s already a federal crime if a service knowingly hosts child sex abuse material (CSAM, also known as “child pornography”). Under these new bills, when certain crimes against children occur on their services, tech companies could also be sued civilly by victims or charged by prosecutors at the state level.  These bills threaten Americans’ communication privacy by using the specter of potentially ruinous liability to…Threatening Encryption, Senate Democrats Aid GOP War on Abortion