Under the Take It Down Act, This Article Could Be Removed

The US Congress’ near-unanimous approval of the TAKE IT DOWN Act (409 votes in favor to 2 against) surprised nobody. Who would oppose a law that makes it a criminal offense to share non-consensual images, including deepfakes? At a time when technology is increasingly facilitating the creation of potentially harmful content, protecting victims seems a necessary step.

And yet… as is often the case, the devil is in the details. For a law to garner rapid and near unanimous approval, something very rare in the current political climate, is usually a sign that the interests of politicians are at stake. If there is one thing members of Congress know well, it is what it means to be the target of online attacks, manipulated images and smear campaigns. The temptation to protect themselves was, this time, too strong to resist.

The problem here is not the stated objective of the law: few of us doubt the need to combat the publication of non-consensual intimate images, but this legislation puts a loaded gun in the hands of the government. Donald Trump has already made it clear that he plans to use it “whenever necessary”, arguing that “no one is treated worse than me on the internet”. It sounds like a joke, but it’s not. With the TAKE IT DOWN Act, the government can require platforms to remove content within 48 hours, without effective safeguards to verify the veracity of the claims.

I’m aware that critics of my stance will say the risks are justified to protect the victims, but I insist: we have to be very, very careful in giving our governments these kinds of sweeping powers. It’s not hard to foresee that platforms, subjected to political pressure, will have all the incentives to preventively remove any controversial content, and to put an end in a practical way to technologies such as end-to-end encryption, one of the few real safeguards of privacy on the Internet. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warns, in order to comply with the law, apps and websites could be forced to monitor everything their users share, even content that is currently encrypted.

And what about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is in charge of enforcing this law? Trump has already demonstrated his willingness to politicize it, firing its Democratic Party members in an unprecedented gesture. Does anyone really believe that this instrument will not be used selectively against media and platforms considered “enemies”?

As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We need to strengthen and enforce existing legislation to protect victims, rather than creating tools that can be used to censor and control online speech. Laws of this type, although created under the umbrella of victim protection, have enormous potential to be perverted into instruments of political repression. A truly free society must be able to protect its citizens without sacrificing their fundamental freedoms on the altar of security. This same article, illustrated with a cartoon of Donald Trump created using artificial intelligence, could be the subject of this law and be withdrawn. Whatever political opinion you have, would it make any sense for it to be so?

Legislating for extreme cases, allowing oneself to be carried away by moral alarm or political opportunism, is never a good idea. The TAKE IT DOWN Act is yet another reminder that threats to our freedom do not always come disguised as tyranny: sometimes, on many occasions, they come wrapped in the promise of protecting us.

(En español, aquí)

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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Photo credit: iStock.com