Bill would strike back at revenge porn
Although federal measure unlikely to pass this year, Speier hopes for ‘extraordinary’ bipartisan support
After coffee but before leaving for school or work, women across America sit down at their computers for a daily ritual: scouring search results and websites for nude photos or sexually explicit videos that they never meant for the whole world to see.
For victims of what has become known as revenge porn, the battle to regain control — over their images and reputations — is constant. Once images are published on the Internet, experts said Friday at a panel discussion in Washington, they become like wildfire: fast-spreading and hard to control.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, introduced a bill this year that would make it a crime to maliciously share a “private visual depiction of a person’s intimate parts or a person engaging in sexually explicit conduct” without that person’s consent.
Violators would face prison sentences of up to five years.
Since Congress is unlikely to move forward on the Intimate Privacy Protection Act before the end of the year, Speier said Friday she will reintroduce the bill next year and hopes to garner “extraordinary” bipartisan support.
“I knew to get something done on this complicated issue, I needed to draft a bill that had teeth yet could withstand congressional scrutiny,” said Speier, who hosted the session
with the nonpartisan Information Technology & Innovation Fund. “Today, with smartphones and endless social media platforms, there is no difference between online and offline life. It is all just life. ”
Speier’s bill treats revenge porn as an issue of privacy rather than online harassment, a distinction not always made in state legislation.
Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia have laws against revenge porn, but they’re all different, and the acts they define and the punishments they seek to dole out vary.
Federal legislation would attempt to fill in the gaps and cover women in states where there is no such law, Speier said.
Banning revenge porn has been a thorny issue. A similar federal bill failed in 2013 because, some experts believe, it raised questions of individuals’ First Amendment rights.
But Speier’s bill, which took two years to devise, is narrowly tailored in hopes that it will avoid conflict with free-speech protections.
And it may, according to constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, who has signaled his support.
“The First Amendment does not require us to stand idly by as real lives are destroyed by virtual actions,” Speier said. “This why we must do something now to address this issue. It is already out of hand, and it is time for Congress to act.”
On Friday, she was joined by supporters from a variety of backgrounds, including a lawyer who represents revenge-porn victims, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, a Facebook executive and the vice president of the National Organization for Women.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety policy, said the Menlo Park company has been dealing with revenge porn for years. Often, it is one of the first places where nude photos pop up for the purpose of humiliating the subject. Users can report offensive content, then employees review it and determine whether it should be removed. If a person indicates that the content is revenge porn, Davis said, the company takes it down right away while pending review.
“If people don’t feel safe, they won’t share, they won’t post photos, they won’t connect with their friends,” she said. “We want people to feel safe, and legislation like this will help people feel safe online.”
Twitter, which has also backed Speier’s legislation, recently released tools designed to ease the process of reporting harassment and content that violates the company’s rules.
But teenagers today are less likely to post nude photos or sexually explicit videos on a social media page than they are to circulate the images themselves, peer to peer, said Internet privacy lawyer Carrie Goldberg.
This can make it harder to track and address, she said, as you can’t issue a takedown notice when it’s not actually posted on any website.
“There are lots of ways for revenge porn to spread,” Goldberg said. It usually starts “device to device over apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, and at some point, in some way, it ends up on Instagram.”
A state law last year banned certain types of revenge porn, but did not include selfies, which are popular with younger people.
California’s law covers only photos taken of a victim by someone else that is then shared without consent “with the intent to cause serious emotional distress.” Those images can include photos and videos surreptitiously taken and those recorded with consent — at the time. Violating California’s revenge porn law could lead to a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.
A harsher federal penalty might be a bigger deterrent, Speier said.
Though that may not stop everyone — such as those who run websites that rely on revenge porn — Speier and others said Friday the vengeful expartners and individuals seeking to humiliate someone may think twice about what that may cost them.
“We’re continuously talking about what victims should do, whether it’s a copyright or civil suit issue, but what we should be talking about is how we can deter the offenders,” Goldberg said. “Offenders are not afraid of being sued for a copyright infringement. They’re not usually people who have money. They’re often abusive exes who want to get back with the victim, even if that means they’re dating in courthouses. What those people are afraid of is going to jail and having something on their public record. That’s why we need to have a criminal law, because then victims won’t have to think about what to do.”