1. United States
2. N.J.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to oppose S. 146, the TAKE IT DOWN Act. While I understand the intention to address the serious problem of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), I believe this bill's notice-and-takedown system is deeply flawed and poses a significant threat to free expression, user privacy, and due process. The TAKE IT DOWN Act mandates a system that is ripe for abuse. The "takedown" provision applies to a broad category of content potentially including any images involving intimate or sexual content and lacks sufficient protections against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. This means lawful content, including satire, journalism, and political speech, could be wrongly censored. The 48-hour takedown deadline will force online service providers, particularly smaller ones, to comply quickly to avoid legal risks, making it impossible to properly verify the content. This will likely lead to reliance on automated filters, which are notoriously inaccurate and often flag legal content. Furthermore, the bill could undermine end-to-end encryption (E2EE), as communications providers that offer this security feature may be unable to comply with takedown notices. This could lead to platforms abandoning encryption entirely, turning private conversations into surveilled spaces. Given just last year the FBI and CISA were recommending all Americans use E2EE applications in light of the Salt Typhon hacks, this bill will introduce risks by reversing recommendations from leading US cybersecurity experts. Instead of fast-tracking this censorship bill, I urge you to support strengthening and enforcing existing legal protections for victims of online harassment. We can help victims of online harassment without embracing a new regime of online censorship that is ripe for abuse.