Washington – Ahead of a Senate Commerce Committee vote Thursday, the Computer & Communications Industry Association sent a letter to Committee Chair Sen. Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ranking Member Sen. Cruz (R-Tex.) urging opposition to S. 1409, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and S. 1418, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (CTOPPA). The bills raise serious First Amendment concerns, would lead to broad restrictions of online speech, contain vague knowledge standards, and would create confusing compliance problems for businesses’ efforts to protect young people online.
CCIA remains concerned about failures to address serious flaws with the legislation. We share lawmakers’ goal of protecting young internet users and support a comprehensive federal privacy law to provide all users with better personal data protections and businesses with a clear roadmap for compliance.
The following can be attributed to CCIA President Matt Schruers:
“CCIA supports the broadly shared goal of protecting children online, but these bills raise serious First Amendment concerns that will result in the blocking of legitimate speech online and contain compliance ambiguities that mean users’ privacy rights and businesses’ obligations will change based on relatively small differences in product design. Lawmakers should reject KOSA and CTOPPA and should instead pass baseline federal privacy rules that offer protections for both children and adults.”
