[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 6, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2227-S2232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Unanimous Consent Requests

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, first, I would like to thank Senator 
Graham for his leadership for protecting our kids, and also I would 
like to thank him for giving me this opportunity to help him advance 
three bipartisan bills which could revolutionize child safety in the 
digital era.
  As child predators have exploited the development of technology to 
harm and endanger our Nation's most vulnerable, our laws to address 
this grave and growing threat to our kids have fallen way, way behind.
  We have three bills to talk about. One goes by the title of ``STOP 
CSAM.'' It strengthens reporting requirements of suspected abuse by 
expanding mandatory reporting and enhancing the CyberTipline, and it 
also protects child victims in court.
  Another bill goes by the title of ``EARN IT.'' It modernizes section 
230 to ensure that victims can secure justice.
  And the last one, the SHIELD Act, would impose necessary criminal 
penalties for distributing illegal explicit material and hold sexual 
predators accountable.
  I am proud to cosponsor both the STOP CSAM and the EARN IT Act and 
have supported all three bills in the Judiciary Committee as part of my 
efforts, joining with Senator Graham, to protect American youth. These 
bills are essential to protect our children and are examples of the 
fine bipartisan work that this body is capable of doing when we put 
constituents first.
  Nothing is more important than protecting our youth, their childhood, 
and their futures. It is time to send these bills to the House and then 
hopefully through the House to President Biden. The longer we wait, the 
more children

[[Page S2228]]

are victimized and more childhoods are lost. We owe it to them to do 
what is right.
  Thanks again to Senator Graham for deferring to me, and thank you for 
your leadership.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I see the chairman of the committee, Senator Durbin. Go 
anytime you like or, Senator Cornyn, if you want to go next, then we 
have Klobuchar and Hawley and myself.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last year the Center for Missing & 
Exploited Children received 32 million--32 million--reports of 
suspected child sexual exploitation.
  As we are demonstrating here on a bipartisan basis, the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, chaired by the Senator from Illinois, passed six 
bipartisan bills that aim to protect those children, and you have heard 
of some of them.
  Two of the bills have already passed the Senate, including my Project 
Safe Childhood Act. Four others still need to pass, including the 
SHIELD Act, which Senator from Iowa just mentioned, which I introduced 
with Senator Klobuchar, from Minnesota, to ensure that criminals who 
share explicit photos of children online are held accountable.
  Children are our Nation's most valuable resource, and yet we neglect 
them far too often when they fall prey to predators on line and in our 
streets.
  But we need to move on these bills. It is not enough for us to pat 
ourselves on the back and say the Judiciary Committee did its job on a 
bipartisan basis. We need these bills to be taken up, passed, and sent 
to the President of the United States without further delay.
  I want to thank Senator Graham for his leadership on this issue, and 
I hope the Senate can finally advance these bills.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Before I turn it over to Senator Durbin and the Senator 
speaks, Senator Durbin has been terrific. The committee worked together 
to get these bills passed unanimously. Thank you for your leadership.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator for bringing us together on the floor 
today.
  Are you worried about what your kids are looking at on those phones 
they carry around all the time? You try to get their attention, and 
they just can't take their face away from the phone. You often may 
wonder, What is on there? They say: Don't worry, Mom and Dad, we are 
just fine.
  Grandparents feel the same way. They look at it and think, What in 
the world are they looking at?
  Sadly, we know that some of them are looking at horrible things that 
they should never look at in that stage of their life, and we also know 
that exploitation is taking place.
  In January, we joined together on a bipartisan basis. Senator Graham 
and myself, as chairman and ranking member of the committee, called a 
historic hearing with five CEOs from Big Tech companies. That hearing 
demonstrated that kids' online safety has widespread bipartisan 
support. Perhaps no other topic--in fact, I can't think of another 
topic where we had a unanimous vote on these bills by every member on 
the committee, Democrat and Republican, all 21.

  The emotion I witnessed during that hearing and the faces of 
survivors, parents, and family members were unforgettable. There were 
parents who lost their children to the little cell phone they were 
watching day in and day out. They committed suicide by the instruction 
of some crazy person on the internet. They were children then and had 
grown up into adults, still haunted by the images they shared with some 
stranger on that little telephone years and years ago.
  And you think to yourself, Well, why didn't they step up and say 
something? If those images are coming up on the internet, why don't 
they do something about it? Why don't they go to the social media site? 
In many and most instances they did and nothing happened.
  That is the reason why we need this legislation. The STOP CSAM Act 
will allow survivors of online child sexual exploitation to sue the 
tech companies that have knowingly and intentionally facilitated the 
exploitation.
  In other words, one young woman told a story. She shared an image of 
herself, an embarrassing image of herself, that haunted her for decades 
afterward. She went to the website that was displaying this and told 
them: This is something I want to take down. It is an embarrassment to 
me. It happened when I was a little girl and still I am living with it 
even today. They knew that it was on their website because this young 
woman and her family proved it, and yet they did nothing--nothing--but 
continued to play this exploitation over and over again.
  Why? How could they get away with it?
  They asked and many people asked: I thought we had laws in this 
country protecting children; what is going on? Well, there is a section 
230 which basically absolves these companies--these media companies--
from responsibility for what is displayed on their websites on their 
social media pages.
  That is exactly what we have changed here. We say something basic and 
fundamental. If the media, social media site knowingly and 
intentionally continues to display these images, they are subject to 
civil liability. They can be sued.
  Want to change this scene in a hurry? Turn the lawyers loose on them. 
Let them try to explain why they have no responsibility to that young 
woman who has been exploited for decades.
  That is what my bill works on. I am happy to have the cosponsorship 
of Senator Graham and others. We believe that this package of bills 
should come to the floor today, and that is what Senator Graham is 
asking for.
  Let's have a debate. Let's hear the other side of the story if there 
is one. But for goodness' sake, for parents and grandparents across 
America and particularly for the kids, let's do something to protect 
them that is fundamental and basic.
  To say that this industry is somehow beyond liability and beyond the 
law is not right; it is not American; and it shouldn't be allowed in 
this country.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I just want to say amen and now pass it to Senator 
Klobuchar.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I rise today to join Senator Durbin 
and Senator Graham--thank you for organizing this--Senator Cornyn and 
Senator Hawley and others who believe it is long past time to update 
and change our laws in this digital world.
  As my colleagues know, I have been trying to do this in the area of 
competition policy. We had a setback this week with losing the 
increased antitrust fees that were supposed to go to the Justice 
Department. But we carry on and hope that won't be the same next year 
and then join our colleagues across the aisle to try to change the law. 
If we are not going to give the resources, we better change the laws.
  For too long social media companies have turned a blind eye when 
children joined their platforms and built algorithms that pushed 
harmful content out to kids. Despite hollow apologies and empty 
promises, these companies haven't fixed the problem.
  The problem has gotten worse and every single parent knows it and 
every single person in this room. You don't even have to have a kid or 
grandkid to know it. You heard it from your friends, and we certainly 
heard it in testimony before our Judiciary Committee.
  That is why I support Chair Durbin's bill, the STOP CSAM Act--I am a 
cosponsor--the EARN IT Act that Senator Blumenthal and Senator Graham 
have, and that is why I am working with Senator Cornyn to pass the 
SHIELD Act.
  I am going to focus on the SHIELD Act because that is my bill, but I 
support these other bills.
  In 2016, 1 in 25 Americans reported being threatened with or being a 
victim of so-called ``revenge porn.'' Now, just 8 years later, studies 
show that 1 in 12 people report being a victim. Yet there is no current 
statute addressing these serious privacy violations, violations which 
have enormous social, emotional, and even financial impacts on victims.
  According to one survey, 93 percent of victims report suffering 
significant emotional distress due to having intimate images shared 
against their will; 13 percent report difficulty getting a job or 
getting into school because these images are on the internet; and more 
than half experienced suicidal thoughts as a result of the violation.

[[Page S2229]]

  FBI Director Wray--if you don't want to believe us--FBI Director Wray 
testified that the Bureau has recently reported an increase in 
sextortion scams, which in 2022 alone resulted in at least 20 victims 
committing suicide--20 victims committing suicide--including Jordan 
DeMay, a high school senior and straight A student who took his life 
after he was blackmailed with the threat of distributing nude photos 
over Instagram.
  What happens is these kids think they have met a girlfriend or a 
boyfriend. They give them a photo, and it turns out to be a scam. And 
then they threaten them that they are going to put the pictures online, 
and these kids don't know who to turn to. They are just dumb kids--and 
they commit suicide. It is that straightforward. The Washington Post 
has done a review of a number of these cases.

  So are we just going to sit there and let this get worse and worse 
and worse? I just don't think that is the answer. The Stopping Harmful 
Image Exploitation and Limiting Distribution, or, as it is known, the 
SHIELD Act, gives law enforcement the tools it needs to stand up for 
victims of serious privacy violations.
  Our bill establishes Federal criminal liability for people who 
distribute or threaten to distribute others' explicit images online 
without consent. It also fills in gaps in existing Federal law so that 
prosecutors can hold all those who share these images intentionally of 
these kids accountable.
  Let me make clear that we have--of course, as a former prosecutor and 
as the Presiding Officer is from the great State of Nevada--we 
understand that you have to narrowly define these bills and these laws. 
That is what we have done, and we made many changes after the markup of 
this bill. We listened, and we made changes to the bill. I have worked 
to refine the bill to address the concerns, and I continue to work with 
my colleagues to do so. But at some point--this was last May, and we 
are still sitting here. So that is why I join my colleagues in asking 
to get these bills through now, not tomorrow, not a month from now--
now.
  When that Boeing plane lost a door midflight in January, nobody 
questioned the decision to ground the planes to see what was wrong. No 
one thought that it was the mom who should have done something and 
checked out those bolts ahead of time or that it was the kid who should 
have been able to figure out that something was going wrong here.
  We have laws on the books. As Senator Durbin said, we have the 
ability to sue. We have laws on the books. These companies are no 
longer little companies that started in a garage and that should be 
shielded from all liability and that should have no rules applied to 
them. If we just want to leave the status quo and leave it to parents 
and see how it works out for these kids, I am not going to go that 
path. That is why I am joining my colleagues across the aisle to get 
these bills done, and when they do their unanimous consent, I will join 
in that as well.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I just want to say that Senator Klobuchar has been 
tenacious in trying to find common ground and in bringing people 
together but also in getting a result.
  Senator Hawley will be next. Then I will wrap it up and make the 
request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. HAWLEY. Madam President, a few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg and a 
train of other tech executives traipsed in front of the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, took their oaths, and answered questions.
  Mark Zuckerberg did something really quite remarkable for the first 
time, I think, ever. Zuckerberg stood up and turned to the parents who 
were there that day and spoke to every parent in America and said that 
he was sorry for what his company has done to the young people whose 
lives have been lost, to the families whose lives have been destroyed, 
to the parents whose dreams have been dashed and shattered. He 
apologized.
  You know, I will say apologies are good, and his apology was long, 
long overdue, but an apology is not enough.
  Now, these tech companies--they are bad actors. We all know that. If 
you are a parent--I have three kids at home--you know they are. What 
are they trying to do to your kids? They are trying to get them to 
spend as much time on that cell phone as possible. They are willing to 
push anything to them. Child exploitation material? You bet. You bet. 
Whatever it takes to get them online longer so they can take their data 
and sell them stuff. That is their bottom line--money, money, money. 
Those are the companies.
  But what about this body? See, I think the question today is not so 
much about these companies. We know what they are doing. We know what 
their bottom line is. What about the U.S. Senate?
  I think the question we have to ask is, Is this Senate--are they 
going to demonstrate some independence? Because here is what it looks 
like to me: It looks like, to me, the biggest corporations in the 
world, the biggest corporations in the history of the world, have a 
hammer lock on the U.S. Senate. It looks like, to me, no piece of 
legislation that those companies don't want will move across this 
floor. If they don't want it, it doesn't move on the floor. If they 
don't want it, it doesn't get a vote. If they don't want it, it doesn't 
happen. They call the shots.
  We have seen this before in American history. We have seen 
corporations try to buy this body. The railroads did it. Other 
companies tried it a century ago. Here we are. The robber barons of 
this era want to own the Senate just like they have owned it in the 
past. It is time that we stood up and demonstrated that our oath is not 
to some corporation and their bottom line, which comes at exploiting 
our children. Our oath is to the Constitution of the United States and 
to serve our constituents--to serve the families, to serve the 
children, to serve the people who have no voice. That is the choice in 
front of us.
  It is time for the Senate to show that the Senate is not bought and 
paid for. It is time for the Senate to show that the people are in 
charge of this House, not the corporations--not Mark Zuckerberg, not 
the people who write campaign checks, but the people. That is what we 
are doing here today on this floor.
  I am proud to join Senator Graham and Senator Durbin and to come as 
many times as it takes until we can get a vote to protect our children 
and to reclaim the independence of the United States Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, to my colleagues, thank you for coming 
down. I really appreciate it.
  Senator Durbin, you have been a great partner on this journey. We 
have some victims groups, and we are going to keep doing this until we 
get the result we think America needs.
  Very quickly, in 2024, here is the state of play: The largest 
companies in America, social media outlets that make hundreds of 
millions of dollars a year, you can't sue if they do damage to your 
family by using their product because of section 230.
  Now, if you wanted to give complete liability protection to a group 
of people, this would be the last group I would pick. So in the 1990s, 
there was a law on the books that, to make sure the internet could get 
up and running, the platforms couldn't be sued for the content that is 
on their platforms.
  Now these platforms enrich our lives, but they destroy our lives. 
These platforms are being used to bully children to death. They are 
being used to take sexual images involuntarily obtained and send them 
to the entire world, and there is not a damned thing you can do about 
it.
  We had a lady come before the committee, a mother, saying her 
daughter was on a social media site that had anti-bullying provisions. 
They complained three times about what was happening to her daughter. 
She killed herself. They went to court. They got kicked out by section 
230.
  The sexual exploitation of children is just mind-boggling, so we have 
legislation to strip away section 230 absolute liability protections. 
One is called the EARN IT Act, and I will make a request for that to 
come to the floor.
  All of these bills have passed the Judiciary Committee--made up of 
the hardest of the hard in the body--unanimously. We have seen and 
heard the same thing. We have different views about the way the world 
should work, about the role of government in our

[[Page S2230]]

lives, but we come together on this. Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham and 
Josh Hawley and--you just name it; all of us--we see the problem the 
same. We hear from our constituents, who are helpless and hopeless. So 
we are going to keep this up until we bring these people to heel.
  There are three ways to protect the consumer. If the consumer is 
damaged, they can go to court and seek relief. They have the burden to 
prove their case, but they have a chance to right a wrong that they 
believe has been done to them by a business. You can't do that here.
  Another way to protect the consumer is to have regulatory agencies, 
licensing agencies, deride hurt on businesses to make sure they perform 
effectively and don't abuse the consumer. There is no such thing here.
  The third is to have a series of laws on the books to protect 
consumers. There are no laws on the books. We are zero for three--you 
can't sue them, there is no regulatory body, and there are really no 
laws on the books to protect the consumer. That needs to change.
  With that, I want to call up--as in legislative session, 
notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 70, S. 1207; 
that the committee-reported amendments be agreed to; that the bill, as 
amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the 
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening action or debate on the EARN IT Act. That is my request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
  The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I reserve my right to object.
  I have heard this discussion about parents. My wife and I are older 
parents, the youngest child being a charming 11-year-old redhead. As I 
say, she is 11. So we are all in for protecting kids from these 
monsters, and there is no disputing that that is what we are talking 
about.
  I say to Senator Graham, we have talked about a lot of issues over 
the years--no disagreement about these people being monsters. CSAM is a 
toxic plague on the internet, perpetrated by people who, in my view, 
are evil to their core. These are real victims, and they need support. 
The criminals have got to be hunted down and locked up.
  I want to be clear. As I have said in the Senate before, I don't take 
a back seat to anybody when it comes to helping kids and punishing 
predators. In a minute, I will talk about my approach, which I think is 
going to be effective. It might not sound effective, but it is going to 
be effective, and it has been endorsed by the National District 
Attorneys Association, made up of district attorneys across the land.
  Now, the specific reason I oppose EARN IT is that it will weaken the 
single strongest technology that protects children and families online, 
something known as strong encryption. It is going to make it easier to 
punish sites that use encryption to secure private conversations and 
personal devices. This bill is designed to pressure communications and 
technology companies to scan users' messages. I, for one, don't find 
that a particularly comforting idea.
  The sponsors of the bill have argued--and Senator Graham is right; we 
have been talking about this a while--that their bills don't harm 
encryption. Yet the bills allow courts to punish companies that offer 
strong encryption. In fact, while it includes some vague language about 
protecting encryption, it explicitly allows encryption to be used as 
evidence for various forms of liability. Prosecutors are going to be 
quick to argue that deploying encryption was evidence of a company's 
negligence in preventing the distribution of CSAM, for example.
  The bill is also designed to encourage the scanning of content on 
users' phones or computers before information is sent over the 
internet, which has the same consequences as breaking encryption. That 
is why 100 groups, civil society groups, including the American Library 
Association--people whom I think all of us have worked for--and the 
Human Rights Campaign and Restore the Fourth--all of them oppose this 
bill because of its impact on essential security.
  Weakening encryption is the single biggest gift you could give to 
these predators and these god-awful people who want to stalk and spy on 
kids. Sexual predators are going to have a far easier time stealing 
photographs of kids, tracking their phones, and spying on their private 
messages once encryption is breached.
  It is very ironic that a bill that is supposed to make kids safer 
would have the effect of threatening the privacy and security of all 
law-abiding Americans.
  My alternative--and I want to be clear about this because I think 
Senator Graham has been sincere about saying that this is a horrible 
problem involving kids. We have a disagreement on the remedy. That is 
what is at issue. What I want us to do is to focus our energy on giving 
law enforcement officials the tools they need to find and prosecute 
these monstrous criminals who are responsible for exploiting kids and 
spreading vile, abusive materials online. That can help prevent kids 
from becoming victims in the first place.
  So I have introduced a bill to do this, the Invest in Child Safety 
Act, to direct $5 billion to do three specific things to deal with this 
very urgent problem.
  What I have proposed in the Invest in Child Safety Act--I am very 
pleased to be able to say it has been endorsed by the National District 
Attorneys Association--is, one, give law enforcement agencies the tools 
and personnel they need to catch the predators who are creating and 
spreading CSAM; two, fund community-based programs to prevent at-risk 
kids from becoming victims in the first place; and three, invest in 
programs to support survivors of abuse.
  Any legislation that doesn't include these pieces, I would just say 
particularly to Senator Graham because he and I have talked about this 
many times over the years and just have a difference of opinion, any 
legislation that doesn't include the three pieces I mentioned, I don't 
think is up to the task of protecting these kids that we all feel so 
strongly about.
  Therefore, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Very quickly, and I will move to CSAM, Senator Durbin's 
bill.
  There is nothing in this bill about encryption. We say that this is 
not an encryption bill. The bill, as written, explicitly prohibits 
courts from treating encryption as an independent basis for liability. 
We are agnostic about that. What we are trying to do is hold these 
companies accountable by making sure they engage in best business 
practices.
  The EARN IT Act simply says: For you to have liability protections, 
you have to prove that you have tried to protect children. You have to 
earn it. It is just not given to you. You have to have the best 
business practices in place, have voluntary commissions that lay out 
what would be the best way to harden these sites against sexual 
exploitation. If you do those things, you get liability. It is just not 
given to you forever. So this is not about encryption.
  As to your idea, I would love to talk to you about it. Let's vote on 
both. But the bottom line here is there is always a reason not to do 
anything that holds these people liable. That is the bottom line. They 
will never agree to any bill that allows you to get them in court--
ever. If you are waiting on these companies to give this body 
permission for the average person to sue you, it ain't never going to 
happen.
  Now, CSAM, Senator Durbin has been tenacious on this. We are talking 
about making sure that sexually explicit material is taken down when 
you notify people. Is that unreasonable?
  And if they don't take it down, knowing that it is up there, you 
ought to be able to sue them. My God, if we can't do that, what good 
are we? There are millions of these photos out there.
  Senator Durbin has been terrific to empower consumers with some hope 
they don't have to live this over and over and over again. Is it too 
much to ask the company, once notified, to take this stuff down?
  With that, as in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I 
ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate 
consideration of Calendar No. 69, S. 1199; that

[[Page S2231]]

the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; the bill, as 
amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the 
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
  Mr. WYDEN. Reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, again, I have made my point that I don't 
disagree in the least with Senator Graham on the seriousness of the 
problem. Unfortunately, this bill suffers from exactly the same matters 
that I objected to earlier.
  So I am not going to repeat myself and put everybody through that. 
But here are the main points to make sure they are heard on CSAM, as I 
did with respect to EARN IT.
  CSAM is a horrifying plague on the internet. Senator Graham and I do 
not disagree on that point at all. Again, weakening encryption, though, 
is not going to help victims or make kids safer. And that is what this 
bill does.
  The Leadership Conference for Civil Rights opposes this bill and the 
earlier bill because they threaten secure private communications that 
are essential for communities of color and every single family in the 
country.
  I would only say, in terms of wrapping this up--and Senator Graham 
and I have talked about this--my door is open in terms of talking about 
approaches that will work. I believe that focusing our energy on giving 
law enforcement, finally, the tools to lock these horrible criminals 
behind bars for exploiting kids is something that we ought to get on 
with. And we ought to invest in programs that support survivors.
  The Invest in Child Safety Act that I have written, with the support 
of the National District Attorneys Association, is endorsed by the 
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and leading child 
welfare groups.
  That is what this bill does. It finally offers a measure of real 
protection for these kids who we have been talking about over the last 
hour or so who deserve it. Their families deserve it. The legislation 
that I have proposed, endorsed by influential voices like the National 
District Attorneys Association, the National Center for Missing & 
Exploited Children, with respect to CSAM, are the way to go. Again, 
anything less--and I don't criticize anybody's motives--just doesn't 
solve the problem. For that reason, I object to this bill as well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  Mr. GRAHAM. We have one more. And I will just respond that I will 
take you up on your offer. You are a good friend and a good man. The 
bottom line is, there are 21 of us on the committee from every corner 
of the political spectrum, and we are not buying any of this.
  Again, what does Senator Durbin want to do? He wants to make sure 
companies, when they are notified that there are sexually explicit 
material involving you or somebody you love, that they will have to 
take it down. If they don't, you can sue them. Who in America is 
against that, except the people making money off the images?
  We will keep talking, but this ain't going to stop. There will be a 
day when every seat is full up here because word is going to spread 
about what we are trying to do.
  Senator Tillis, you have been terrific. I don't think you are a 
lawyer, are you? You are the smartest guy on the committee, then.
  He figured this out really quickly. You don't have to be a lawyer to 
figure this out, just common sense and human decency.
  The SHIELD Act--as in legislative session, notwithstanding rule XXII, 
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate 
consideration of Calendar No. 78, S. 412; that the committee-reported 
substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be 
considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid on the table with no intervening 
action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
  The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I want to 
thank the Presiding Officer, and I also want to thank my friend Senator 
Lindsey Graham, who has been a partner on so many things involving 
criminal justice, on so many good things involving safety, has been a 
partner on, obviously, many things, and foreign policy as well.
  I want to object to the request by the Senator from South Carolina to 
pass the SHIELD Act by unanimous consent. But I really want to start by 
saying that I know we are talking about a deeply vital issue today that 
we must address as the U.S. Senate.
  I believe that the Senator from South Carolina and I have a common 
goal, and we see eye to eye. Anytime a person's privacy or bodily 
autonomy is violated, we have a duty to address the harm that they have 
experienced and seek solution so that we prevent the same thing from 
happening to others. He and I have talked about this in the committee 
multiple times.
  Congress must act when there are people who exploit others or harass 
them or set out to exact some twisted revenge on them by sharing 
nonconsensual images. They should be held accountable for the serious, 
emotional, psychological, and professional harm it can cause to 
victims. I believe this is what the sponsors of the SHIELD Act intend 
to do.
  But the bill offered today stands to have unintended consequences 
that I have discussed in committee and that need to be addressed. Many 
of these issues were addressed in committee in our markup of the bill. 
Senator Klobuchar, who leads this bill, has been working with me to 
correct those problems. We are working diligently and in good faith to 
address these issues so that this Congress can pass a bill to vindicate 
the victims. When we were in committee, I spoke and asked for the 
opportunity to do that work, and I am hoping that we continue to have 
that now.
  It is our obligation to get this right, and I am grateful to the 
Senator from Minnesota and her staff who are working with me to make 
sure we do so. Thus, I object.
  As in legislative session and notwithstanding rule----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senator, the objection is heard.
  Mr. BOOKER. Oh, thank you very much. I was doing what I was told. 
Forgive me.
  Mr. GRAHAM. If you want to keep going, I will yield you some time.
  Mr. BOOKER. Anytime you defer to me, Senator, to give me a chance to 
speak to you, that is one of my higher honors in the U.S. Senate. Thank 
you very much.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, we will be back. We will work with 
Senator Booker. We have tried in committee. Senator Wyden will keep 
talking, but I think 21 of us are pretty determined that there be some 
consumer protection laws in this space on the books this year.
  I am going to talk to President Trump. Looks like he is going to be 
the Republican nominee. I have known President Biden a long time. He 
has been on the Judiciary Committee. I hope both of them will see this 
as something they would agree to.
  Senator Durbin, I will let you wrap up. I just cannot thank you 
enough. We have our differences for sure; but on this, you have been a 
great leader of the committee.
  No matter what happens in 2025, if we take over or you all keep the 
Chamber, we are going to keep doing this.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I want to thank Senator Graham. This has 
truly been a bipartisan effort.
  People are saying: Why don't they work together? Why don't the two 
parties work together? Well, 21 members of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee unanimously voted for these six bills--unanimously. And we 
come to the floor today saying we want to bring these to the floor for 
consideration.
  This Chamber is largely empty day in and day out. We have got plenty 
of time and opportunity to use these desks and these microphones to 
consider issues.
  What are the issues we might take up? The issues that keep families 
up at night. Why in the world is our little girl on that telephone 
night and day?

[[Page S2232]]

What is she doing on there? She promises us she is safe and not to 
worry, Mom and Dad. But we don't know any better. And for goodness' 
sake, what is a parent supposed to do?
  Now consider the worst case scenario: Someone takes advantage of your 
little girl or granddaughter on the internet and displays an image 
which is horrifying. You know it, you see it, and you can't believe it. 
You finally go to the media platform and say: For goodness' sakes, take 
that image down. This is exactly where you will find it. Bring it down. 
We don't want that to be broadcast anymore.
  And if the media platform, at that point, knowingly and intentionally 
ignores the information you have given them to protect your family, 
then they can be held civilly liable. They can be sued. Do you think 
they will pay attention then? Why, of course, they will. That is why 
the objections are being heard.
  I am going to keep working on this. I thank Senator Graham for making 
it a bipartisan effort. He is a wonderful partner on these issues.
  We are coming back. I am working on a modification of my bill to 
bring some more support and make sure we consider everybody's point of 
view. But we do not take any position on encryption. As Senator Graham 
said, we are agnostic on that subject, but we do believe that something 
should be done to protect these families once and for all and to let 
these media platforms--these multimillion-dollar, profitable 
platforms--know they have a responsibility to the people of this 
country.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators 
be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote: Senator Collins for 
up to 5 minutes and Senator Murray for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.