Government Watchdog Group Urges Congress to Oppose EARN IT Act

Patrick Hedger

May 4, 2023

For Immediate Release                                                 Contact: Abigail Graham: (202) 417-7235

May 3, 2023                                                                            

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) sent a letter to the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives urging members to oppose S. 1207/H.R. 2732, the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act.

As TPA outlines in the letter, the EARN IT Act has extreme consequences such as “severely undermining Americans’ right to privacy, free speech, and the cybersecurity of their accounts and devices.”

Patrick Hedger, TPA Executive Director, offered the following comment:

“There’s a reason the EARN IT Act hasn’t passed in both the 116th and 117th Congresses. Not only are there serious First and Fourth Amendment violations, but real cybersecurity and privacy concerns associated as well.

“Combatting online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is rightly a priority for lawmakers. In 2021 alone, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received 29 million reports of CSAM containing over 84 million images and videos. Unfortunately, the EARN IT Act, like the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), will force platforms to censor perfectly legal speech and push offenders deeper underground.

“The EARN IT Act also places encryption – one of the leading cybersecurity practices – in peril. Its unconstitutional age verification requirements combined with its allowance for encryption to serve as a contributory factor for liability forces platforms to either encrypt all their data and assume massive liability, or encrypt nothing, collect massive amounts of user data and run the risk of cyberattacks.

“We strongly encourage members to oppose the EARN IT Act in the 118th Congress. Its provisions will make it harder to find and prosecute perpetrators of CSAM, contain serious constitutionality questions, and place users’ data security at undue risk.”

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Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to educating the public through the research, analysis and dissemination of information on the government’s effects on the economy.