EFF, the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers joined a coalition that sent two letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee to oppose S. 1080, the Cooper Davis Act. The letters point out the privacy, speech, and criminal justice problems with the bill.
The bill would require private messaging services, social media companies, and even cloud providers to report their users to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) if they find out about certain illegal drug sales.
Even with the proposed amendments, S. 1080 would weaken an already insufficient privacy law and would provide a roadmap for more sweeping and overbroad carveouts. Its vague requirements and criminal penalties would result in companies over-reporting users to the DEA for innocent, protected speech. History shows it may also encourage companies to engage in dragnet scanning of user communications, which would result in even more errors and sweep up the same voices Congress is trying to protect.
Rather than addressing a pressing health crisis caused by fentanyl overdoses, this bill does an end run around the Fourth Amendment by requesting user information from online services in the form of mandatory reporting and voluntary disclosures. ...
