Home Consumer Lawmakers Look To Make Prosecuting Child Predators Easier

Lawmakers Look To Make Prosecuting Child Predators Easier

Sen. Blaise Ingoglia. (Photo by Christine Sexton/Florida Phoenix)

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End-to-end encryption has made crimes against minors significantly harder to prosecute, legal experts say. Florida lawmakers plan to make social media companies cooperate with those investigations.

The Sen. Blaise Ingoglia-introduced SB 868 is headed to the Senate floor after passing the Rules Committee Wednesday. Social media companies offering encrypted messaging are in opposition to the bill while state attorneys came to Tallahassee hoping the Legislature would make their jobs easier.

Encrypted messages, those designed only to be read by the sender and receiver, not the owners of the platform it was sent on, are designed to prevent hackers or others acting in bad faith from accessing personal messages.

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Since end-to-end encryption has become widely-used, Ingoglia said, social media companies have told prosecutors they have no records to provide toward convicting “nefarious” actors in child pornography and drug trafficking cases.

“As you know, there are extremely bad actors online targeting minors with sexually explicit and sexually suggestive materials,” Ingoglia said. “Encryption, used by social media companies, makes it more challenging if not impossible for law enforcement to retrieve the proof necessary to put these guys behind bars.”

The bill would require social media companies to de-crypt messages if subpoenaed by a court and prohibit minors from using messages that are designed to disappear.

Popular apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger offer end-to-end encryption.

NetChoice, a tech association representing some of the largest social platforms, contest the bill, saying it is “well intentioned” but “fundamentally undermines the core purpose of encryption.”

“Creating an encryption backdoor is fraught with privacy and security risks,” NetChoice stated on its website.

Rep. Michelle Salzman is sponsor of the House version, HB 743, which must pass the Commerce Committee before receiving a floor vote.

“I shared with all the social media companies that came to see me that we are going to put the safety of Floridians first and them second, and either they can get on board and look good or they can just stand there and fight and lose,” Salzman told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “We’re not going to stop here. This bill will pass this year and we’re going to continue the momentum.”

This bill is another in lawmakers’ effort to protect minors online.

Minors younger than 14-years-old will be prohibited from using social media if the state successfully defends its 2024 law that also requires parental consent for 14-and-15-year-olds to use social media platforms with addictive features. NetChoice filed suit against the state on that 2024 law, HB 3.

“So, just think if you were a parent, and you know that your child is being groomed by somebody online, and the child is now being pressured to give nude photos or create child pornography for the purpose of transmitting over,” Ingoglia said.

“And you went to a state’s attorney or a prosecutor and they tried and they gave the subpoena or the warrant and the social media came back and they said, ‘Hey we have nothing.’”

Ingoglia said he does not think social media companies are behaving in good faith.

“Under any other section of law when it comes to prosecuting, somebody who destroys evidence will be put away,” Ingoglia said. “But social media companies though their algorithms and through their coding are allowed to destroy evidence all the time.”

State Attorney Amira Fox, prosecuting in Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry, and Lee counties, stood beside Salzman and Ingoglia Wednesday in hopes the bill will pass.

“Social media platforms have made it very difficult for prosecutors,” Fox said, adding that end-to-end encryption has attracted people who want to use it for illegal purposes.

Fox said compared to the beginning of her career, social media have boosted the number of cases involving child predators.

“We have spent years putting together task forces to tackle human trafficking and child abuse, and now we’re met with, when we send our subpoenas and our search warrants to these social media companies … we get back ‘no material exists,’ because they’ve encrypted it,” Fox said during a news conference Wednseday afternoon at the Capitol.

Fox said the lawmakers’ bill is a “great bill to stand up to this.”



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