1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

The proposed TAKE IT DOWN Act aims to address non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), but its broad definitions and lack of safeguards raise significant concerns about its impact on free expression, privacy, and due process. The bill mandates a notice-and-takedown system that could lead to overreach and censorship of lawful content, including satire, journalism, and political speech. There are no real safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests, unlike the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which at least has an anti-abuse provision. Moreover, the bill fails to provide clear exemptions for end-to-end encrypted services, potentially forcing platforms to abandon encryption entirely in order to comply with takedown requests. This would undermine user privacy and harm victims of NCII who rely on encryption for safety and communication. Importantly, there are already existing federal civil laws and state criminal laws that address NCII, defamation, harassment, and extortion related to such content. Rather than creating a broad censorship regime prone to abuse, Congress should focus on enforcing and improving these existing protections. The proposed Act, in its current form, poses a significant threat to free expression, privacy, and due process online.