Virginia Senator Mark Warner wants to make the internet safer for kids. It’s a lofty goal, one that states have tried to tackle with varied success. His new effort aims to have third party groups monitor kid’s online chats.
It’s called Sammy’s Law. It’s a bipartisan effort, spearheaded by Virginia Senator Mark Warner and Alabama Senator Katie Brit, named after a kid who bought fentanyl laced drugs online and died.
“This law would require the biggest platforms to actually report if there is evidence the user is using terms he or she is going after drugs, going into anorexia,” Warner said of the effort.
The law creates a new market for third party social media monitoring of youth chats, those chats would then be reported to the Federal Trade Commission, and the platforms could be held liable for allowing harm to occur.
That might seem like a privacy violation for the nation’s kids, but University of Virginia Law professor Kevin Cope said children don’t have the same expectation of privacy as adults.
“Courts put a lot of trust in parents to surveil their own children," Cope told Radio IQ. "It’s not considered a significant privacy concern when it's the parents themselves.”
Jennifer Huddleston is with the CATO Institute. She said the mission of protecting kids online is noble, but she fears the level of data collection suggested by Sammy’s Law could be too broad.
“This could allow other parents or other adults to see a child who’s not their own’s data, if two teenagers are communicating together," Huddleston feared. "When you open up a messaging service to allow for, even if it is a beneficial element like a parent trying to engage with a young person, make sure they're safe, that can open up broader vulnerabilities that impacts everyone.”
Whether or not Sammy’s Law winds up on President Donald Trump’s desk remains to be seen.
