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Floor Speech
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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.
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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.
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Mr. GRAHAM. I just want to say amen and now pass it to Senator Klobuchar.
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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.
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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 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.
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.
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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 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.
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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.
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.
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Mr. GRAHAM. If you want to keep going, I will yield you some time.
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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.
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