WEBVTT - Episode 846: Take It Down Act 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:08.119 On this episode of Newsworld. On Monday, President Donald Trump 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:12.760 signed the Take It Down Act, bipartisan legislation that enacts 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:17.480 stricter penalties for the distribution of non consensual intimate imagery, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.360 sometimes called revenge porn, as well as deep fakes created 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:25.480 by artificial intelligence. A legislation which goes into effect immediately. 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.320 Was introduced by Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:33.479 and Senator Amy Klobushar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and gained 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.560 the support of First Lady Milania Trump. The law makes 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.640 it illegal to knowingly publish or threaten to publish intimate 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:46.879 images without a person's consent, including AI created deep fakes. 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:50.600 It also requires websites and social media companies to remove 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.360 such material within forty eight hours of notice from a victim. 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:56.840 Here to talk about the Take It Down Act, I'm 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.360 really pleased to welcome my two guests, Senator Ted Cruz, 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:04.200 representing the great State of Texas, and Scott Berkowitz, founder 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:17.680 and president of Rain, said, Welcome to knuts World. 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:19.200 That's great to be with you, Nut. 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:22.440 I'm really curious how did you become involved in the 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.880 Take It Down Acting? How big of impact was the 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.880 meeting you had with Elliston, Barry and her mom, who 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.840 had snapchat, refused for nearly a year to remove an 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.560 AI generated deep fake of the then fourteen year old. 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.559 What had happened to Alliston was infuriating and it was wrong. 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.039 And over a year ago, Elliston was then fourteen. She 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:48.240 was a freshman in high school and one morning her 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:50.880 phone started blowing up. All her friends were texting her. 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:54.680 And what had happened is a classmate of hers, who 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:58.120 was a boy in her class, had taken a perfectly 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:02.440 innocent picture of her from social medi and had used 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.080 an app that uses AI or artificial intelligence, to create 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.960 a deep fake, and then sent to all of her 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.480 classmates in ninth grade what appeared to be naked pictures 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:15.960 of Elliston. And the technology is such that it's not 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.400 a photoshop with someone's head stuck on a body, but 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:23.240 it appears perfectly real. But it was entirely fake, and 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:26.560 Elliston understandably was in tears. Listen, it's hard to be 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.200 a teenage girl today. As the father of two daughters, 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.600 I know the pressures that are on particularly our girls. 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.440 It was even more frustrating because the way the law was, 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.480 what the boy had done was not illegal. It was 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.800 perfectly illegal to do that. The Take It Down Act 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.160 corrects that now. And what it does is two things. One, 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:49.760 it makes it a crime, a felony to post non 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.760 consensual intimate imagery, either real pictures so called revenge porn, 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:59.040 or in Elliston's case, deep fakes of real people. But two, 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.200 and this goes right to your question, new it puts 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.280 a legal obligation on the tech platforms to pull the 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:06.160 content down. 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.960 When you'd decided to sponsor the Take It Down Act, 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.600 I notice she got your colleague, Senator Emmykloboshar. How did 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:16.000 you and Amy come together to make this a bipartisan bill. 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:19.360 The way the issue came to my attention initially is 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.880 because Elliston is a Texan and her mom, Anna is 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.320 a Texan. They live in Alito, Texas, which is North 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.600 Texas outside Dallas Fort Worth. And her mom called my 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.400 office and said, you're my senator, can you help me? 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:35.560 And my staff elevated it to me and we looked 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:37.600 at what happened to Alliston and thought it was horrible, 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:42.440 and we discovered this was a phenomenon that was happening 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:44.480 all over the country. Last year there was a three 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:48.560 thousand percent increase in deep fakes, and over ninety percent 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:51.120 of the victims are women and teenage girls. And so 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.000 we drafted the Take It Down Act to fix this problem. 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.080 And Amy Klobuchar and I worked together quite a bit. 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.800 We're on two committees together. We're on Judiciary together, and 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.520 we're on Commerce together. I'm the chairman of the Senate 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.200 Commerce Committee. And she and I have had a good 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.800 relationship for thirteen years, and so I approached Amien. She's 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:10.760 been very active in the tech space as of I 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.360 and reining in abuses of big tech, and I asked, 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:15.240 you want to join me on this and she said yes. 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.280 And in fact, the first time I met Elliston and 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.640 Anna was when they came to d C to join 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.640 Amy and me for the press conference announcing the bill. 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:30.040 And we're sitting in my office and I asked, I said, well, 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:34.599 whatever happened to the pictures? And Anna Elliston's mother she 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:38.640 expressed enormous frustration. She said, you know, this was nine 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:40.839 months ago. This happened and she said, I've been on 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:43.960 the phone, I've been emailing Snapchat over and over and 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.400 over again, and I've been running into a complete stone 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.320 Wall and nude. I turned to my staff, I said, 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:52.479 I want you to get the CEO of Snapchat on 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:57.680 the phone today. I want those pictures down today. Within 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:01.640 two hours, they pulled them down. But it shouldn't take 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.000 a sitting senator making a phone call to make that 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.240 happen and to take it down act now that President 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.679 Trump has signed it in the law gives a legal 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:12.800 right to any victim that if you notify a tech 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:17.680 platform that picture is me. It is explicit, and you 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:21.880 do not have my consent, they have a federal statutory 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:23.760 obligation to take it down immediately. 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.559 It's impressive at a time of great partisanship. The bill 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.599 that you developed passed the Senate unanimously and then passed 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:33.680 the House in a four h nine to two vote. 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:35.920 I mean, they are not many things that have that 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:40.000 level of unanimity. So obviously you had found a sweet spot. 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.520 And I'm curious, how did you craft this to fit 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:45.080 within the First Amendment rights. 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:51.160 Well, we made it explicitly focused on non consensual intimate imagery. 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:53.279 And there are a lot of laws across the country 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:57.240 that deal with so called revenge porn, where say a 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.680 boyfriend and girlfriend are in a romantic relationship and they 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.560 choose to take explicit pictures or videos, and then they 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.800 have a bad breakup and one or the other decides 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:10.120 to post that to the world, to stick it to 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.680 their former boyfriend or girlfriend, and that I think is 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:16.960 a grotesque violation of privacy. And those laws have been 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:19.360 upheld across the country because you don't have a right 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.919 to do that to somebody else. Texas has a revenge 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:27.560 porn law. The problem is Texas's law did not cover 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:30.320 deep fakes. Deep fakes are a new enough phenomenon that 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.240 most of the laws in place. That's a hole in 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:35.760 the law, and so this did not meet the legal 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.839 definition of child pornography, even though these appeared to be 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.039 naked pictures of a fourteen year old girl and a 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.480 real fourteen year old girl. Because they were deep fakes, 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.680 they didn't fall under the definitions of child porn, and 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.279 so we define it. It's clear the First Amendment does 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:53.520 not cover the right to put out revenge porn and 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:57.200 target an individual. And it's also clear the First Amendment 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.560 doesn't cover child pornography, and so we put deep fakes 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:04.760 in that explicit category. And I'll tell you on the 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.479 take it down obligation new What we did is we 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:12.400 borrowed from an existing legal framework. So there's a long 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:16.480 standing law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that if 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.720 you tweet out a song from the Lion King, they'll 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.160 take it down within hours because you don't have a 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:27.760 right to violate someone else's copyright or trademark. And so 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:32.400 every tech platform has an office that deals with notice 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.240 and takedowns where they get notified Okay, this is copyrighted 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:37.760 material and they pull it down. Well, what we did 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.040 is we put this in that same bucket. So that 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.920 same office that is pulling down the tweet of the 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:46.920 Lion King. Now if a teenager or a woman notifies, hey, 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:51.120 this is nonconsensual intimate imagery, that same office and that 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:55.520 same mechanism has the statutory obligation to remove the content. 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:58.559 I know it says you were developing this. First Lady, 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:02.600 Milennia Trump, had been leading a be Best campaign. One 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.640 of her concerns was online safety. How helpful was she 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:08.880 in drawing attention to the whole concept of take it Down? 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.960 So the First Lady was incredibly helpful. In the last Congress, 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.520 we passed take it Down through the Senate passed it unanimously, 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:22.480 and then in the House, unfortunately it failed to get passed. 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.320 House leadership had added it to the Continuing Resolution in 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:29.160 December that was going to pass, but then if you remember, 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.679 that Continuing Resolution got pulled down and much of the 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:34.680 stuff that had been added got stripped out of it. 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:39.840 So it did not pass last Congress. And so this Congress, 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:43.280 starting in January, we passed it again through the Senate, 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.200 and the real challenge a new you've been speaker, you know, 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.679 House leadership has a million different demands in terms of 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:54.040 where to allocate floor time, and so the challenge was 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.280 getting this to rise up the priority so that it 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.439 gets a vote on the House floor. And the First 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:02.880 Lady reached out and called my office and said she 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:05.480 was very interested in this bill and she wanted to help, 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.960 which I thought was fantastic. So I invited the first 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:11.839 Lady to come to Capitol Hill and we did a 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.800 roundtable with the victims. And so the first Lady heard 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:19.800 from Elliston directly heard her story. She heard from Francesca Mani, 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.080 who is a fifteen year old girl in New Jersey 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.680 who the exact same thing happened to her. That happened 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:28.079 to Elliston. She also heard from Brandon Guffey, who is 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:32.160 a state rep in South Carolina, whose story is even 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:36.160 more tragic. His son got a direct message from what 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:40.120 he thought was a cute girl, and this supposed cute 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:44.679 girl convinced him to send naked pictures of himself to her. Well, 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.199 it turns out that that cute girl was in fact 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:51.360 a con man who began sextorting him and saying, send 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.400 me money now, or I'm going to take these naked 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:56.160 pictures you just said, I'm going to send them to 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:59.720 your parents, to your family, to your friends. And tragically, 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.199 this young man, Gavin, took his own life. He committed suicide. 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.960 And Brandon told that story. The time between the first 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:11.440 direct message from the con man and when his son 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.439 took his life was ninety minutes. And we've seen suicides 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:18.880 all across the country from this growing problem. And so 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.920 when the first lady came and heard these stories firsthand, 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.199 and she leaned in at the roundtable, the Speaker of 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.360 the House was there, Steve Scalise, the Majority leader, was there, 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.840 Brett Guthrie, the relevant committee chairman in the House was there, 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:37.040 and Milania asked them, will you commit to getting this done, 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:41.559 and House leadership said absolutely, And I think the first 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.880 Lady's involvement elevated and sped up the progress dramatically and 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:47.360 helped us get it over the finish. 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.880 Line, teenage suicide has become a terrible problem and now 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.480 extends down to like eight, nine and ten year olds, 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:55.559 and a lot of it I think comes straight out 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:59.040 of the effect of social media and the effect of 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.600 isolation because of people paying so much attention to their 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.160 cell phones. Let me ask you, do you see additional 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:11.120 legislation evolving as we learn more about these kinds of problems, 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:13.920 and do you think they can evolve in a bipartisan way. 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.640 I think Congress needs to do more to protect kids online. 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:21.240 When you and I were teenagers, their challenges to being 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.000 a teenager, but we didn't face all of these forces. 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:29.160 Our kids. We give them a phone, and every predator 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.080 on earth has access to them, every evil force, the 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.640 pressures that are on our kids. You look at social media, 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:39.240 they push substance abuse, they push self harm, they push 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:44.040 body image issues and self worth issues, and it increases 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:49.360 depression and increases anxiety and increases suicidal ideation. So one 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:51.760 example of a build that I want to move is 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:55.720 a bill called Keep Kids Off Social Media or COSMA, 0:11:56.040 --> 0:12:00.440 which I've introduced with Brian Shotts, Democrat from Hawaii, and 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:04.040 it does three things. Number one, it prohibits children under 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.800 thirteen from having social media accounts. I think there's no 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:09.439 reason for a child that young to have a social 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:15.280 media account. Number two, it prohibits tech platforms from using 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:20.839 algorithmic boosting for kids under sixteen, and boosting is how 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:25.160 they push particular messages at kids. And then number three, 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.600 there's a provision in a bill that I introduced separately 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.440 called the Eyes on the Board Bill, that says that 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.920 any schools that receive federal funds have to block social 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.120 media on campus. That if you're in class, there's no 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.600 reason for you to be on Snapchat, you ought to 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:45.120 be listening to the lessons. And that bill we passed 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.800 out of the Commerce Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support. It 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.120 is yet to pass the Senate, but I think that 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:54.920 would be another important step. And I'll tell you what's interesting. 0:12:55.000 --> 0:13:00.920 Newte are colleagues that are in their seventies and eighties. Frankly, 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:02.840 when it comes to this issue, most of them are 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.760 a little puzzled by it. They just haven't dealt with 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:09.160 it firsthand. You know, the co sponsors that I have 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:13.840 on this bill, they're almost exclusively senators in their forties 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.640 and fifties who have kids at home, who have teenagers 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.920 or adolescents. And every parent I know who's dealing with 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.480 this right now is frustrated and doesn't know how to 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.640 fully protect their kids online and on their phone. And 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:28.800 I think we need to do a lot more to 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:29.200 help them. 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.400 I say this as somebody in the age group you're describing. 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.280 You may want to encourage the older senators to talk 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:36.280 to their grandchildren. 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:38.480 Yeah, and I am doing exactly that. 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:41.760 Suddenly they'd be in a new world. You are a 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.640 leader on so many different topics, but on this one, 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.600 I suspect you will literally be able to say over 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.720 the years that you saved several thousand lives literally from 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:55.560 committing suicide, and you saved tens or twenty thousands of 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:59.800 people who otherwise would have been deeply humiliated and deeply affected, 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:02.319 so psychologically so ted up. Thank you for your time. 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:04.640 I know how amazingly busy you are, and this was 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.600 a real active leadership on your part, and something which 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:09.800 the country owes you a debt of gratitude. 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:11.720 Well, Newt, thank you. And let me just say I 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:15.120 appreciate the first lady very much. Her leadership was critical. 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.959 I appreciate President Trump. In the State of the Union, 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.640 he introduced Eliston Barry and he called on Congress to 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.240 pass the bill. I would be remiss if I didn't 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:26.440 say thank you, especially to the victim advocates, because they 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.200 could have taken their pain and just hurt from it, 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:31.760 and instead they decided to stand up and lead. And 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:36.120 the bravery, particularly Eliston and Francesca, but also certainly Brandon 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:40.080 and Breeslou and other victim advocates. The bravery they've shown 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.880 is extraordinary and this would not have gotten done without 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:43.680 their courage. 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:46.480 That's great, That's tremendous. Listen, have a wonderful day and 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:48.040 good luck in Texas. 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:49.760 All right, take care, Thanks Duke. 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:08.320 Jah, thank you for joining me. Can you talk about 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.640 how the Take It Down Act gained by partisan support? 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:12.560 Yeah? 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:14.920 Absolutely, a lot of credit to sender a Cruise and 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.160 Center a Clovi char Sexual abuse has always been a 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.280 non partisan issue. We're fortunate to have really great support 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:24.960 from both sides in Congress. I think what Congress saw 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:28.440 here is that tech enabled sexual abuse is the fastest 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:32.240 growing form of sexual abuse. Every month, we're seeing a 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:37.640 huge increase in cases. Rather than waiting until this is 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:40.640 a problem that is too big to be fixed, Sender 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:43.280 a Cruise and Center clovichar jumped in and wanted to 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:46.040 do something about it so that we can try and 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:47.920 slow it down, try and put an end to it 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:49.840 before it hits every school in the country. 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:55.480 The school issue of internet impacts psychologically is enormous. You 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.600 wouldn't have thought it thirty years ago. But a piece 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:00.440 of making America healthy again is getting our hand around 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.000 this whole internet and social media section, which has become, 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.880 particularly for very young people, an enormous part of their lives. 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:13.440 You're absolutely right. Creating non consensual intimate images has become 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:17.560 just shockingly easy. There are dozens of apps and websites 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:21.680 now that within minutes a kid can submit pictures of 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:25.600 their classmates and generate nude photos of them, and within 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.440 minutes that can be distributed around the school and all 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:30.480 around the web. So this is a new form of 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:35.320 abuse that is having a really devastating effect on victims, 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:38.880 and it's just growing like crazy and keep in mind 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.120 worth just at the beginning of this AI revolution. A 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:45.040 few years from now, when these tools become even more 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:49.000 accessible and easier to use and more universal, this problem 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:50.640 is going to be so far out of control if 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:52.120 we don't do something about it now. 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:56.360 The degree to which younger people in particular live in 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:00.400 that world, their reality is in many ways an electronic reality. 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.000 It shapes them. A lot of states, as I understand, though, 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:06.080 we're trying to find a way to address this. So 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.679 I think there was something like forty eight different states 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.240 that enacted some kind of law. What's your sense of 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:12.439 the state level effort. 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.520 There has been some good action in the states, but 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:20.200 the laws are very inconsistent, and states sometimes have difficulty 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:24.440 because the Internet is open, it's worldwide. State by state 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.280 regulation ultimately isn't going to work. There needs to be 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:31.320 some federal regulation so that we can criminalize the distribution 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:33.320 of these images across state lines. 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:37.240 Forty eight states had enacted some kind of law criminalizing 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:42.000 non consensual distribution of inimate images. South Carolina and Massachusetts 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.920 had not. What was happening in those two states, they. 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:47.760 Were flow to come to the game. I think that 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.520 initially there was some opposition on one side about first 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:53.919 and ending grounds the idea that we're going to be 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.040 making certain images illegal. But I think to Take It 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:00.560 Down Acted a really good job at carving out legit uses. 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.760 So doctors can still share intimate images for medical purposes, 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:08.879 law enforcement can still distribute them for investigative purposes, but 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:14.160 when they're used to harass or abuse the subject, we've 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:15.160 criminalized them now. 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:19.639 So if somebody actually goes out now and deliberately sends 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:24.320 out an artificial intelligence generated image, are they personally at 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:25.760 risk for having sent it out? 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:29.840 They are if they are distributing it without the consent 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:33.080 of the person pictured in the image. And I should 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:37.000 say distributing intimate images of children has always been illegal 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:41.240 and still is. This expands that to intimate images that 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:45.680 might not have been caught under child sexual abuse material laws, 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:49.000 as well as to images of adults that are being distributed. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:51.479 The key part of implementing this is going to be 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:57.440 companies like Meta, TikTok, Google. What's their responsibility? 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.480 They do have really a key role here. One of 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:03.120 the most important provisions of the Take It Down Act 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.960 is a requirement that the big tech platforms, once they're 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:10.240 notified of a non consentual intimate image on their platform, 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:12.840 they have to take it down within forty eight hours. 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.119 That's the provision that the Take It Down Act is 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:19.320 named for. We are hoping that the tech companies will 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:22.840 really embrace the responsibility here. This is about looking out 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:26.080 for their customers, and this is about treating their user 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:29.359 as well. It's incredibly traumatic for a kid to find 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.680 out that their naked image is circulating around on TikTok, 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:36.200 around on Instagram and not have a way to get 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:39.200 it down. And so this finally makes it easy for 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.720 someone to identify an image tell the platform, and the 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:45.040 platform then has two days to take it down. 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:47.919 This bill gets signed in a law in May, and 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:50.600 yet you're setting a deadline of July fourth, which is 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:55.399 by normal federal standards, amazingly fast. What was your rationale 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:58.280 from these very big corporations moving this quickly. 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.679 We're being optimistic here, but the law gives the federal 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:04.520 government a year to fully implement it, and there's the 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.639 whole process of the Federal Trade Commission having to come 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.119 up with regulations around it. But what we're asking is, 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:13.719 we've worked with a lot of these tech companies before 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.119 they can move very quickly. This is not a complicated 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.480 process or complicated technology that they need to build to 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.400 implement this. They need to add a button on their 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:27.720 site that lets people click and report an image, and 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:29.680 then they need to set up an automated process and 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.840 that image gets taken down off their site. So this 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:35.520 is something if they are committed to it, they could 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:36.800 get done in days. 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:41.320 And the normal process of lobbyist in Washington. I'm surprised 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:46.359 there wasn't a huge effort to delay implementation. What would 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:48.800 the cost in human terms have been if you had 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:50.080 delayed the implementation for. 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:54.119 A year, literally millions of new victims who would have 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:58.080 had no recourse. Every one of these images, once they're 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:00.960 out on the web can be distributed thousand times and 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.480 can have millions of viewers, So the human cost would 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:09.160 have just been extraordinary. And one of the reasons that 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:12.000 this was passed by the House so quickly this year 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.760 was the involvement of the First Lady Lania Trump decided 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.960 to take up this cause and to push for the 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:22.719 passage of the takendown at This is actually the first 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.399 policy that she worked on when she became First Lady 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.520 this term, and that really motivated the leadership of the 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.000 House and members of Congress to do something about this, 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.280 to move this quickly. So I got to give her 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:36.679 huge credit for being in the lead on this and 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:40.840 understanding that this is such an important issue for the 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:42.240 health and well being of kids. 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:46.399 I suspect given her background as a world class model, 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:50.440 and she probably fully understood the importance of imagery and 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:53.840 how devastating it could be to have the wrong image 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:57.000 out there and what do we do to kids because 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.960 there's a period there and adolescents where the very sensitive, 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:03.560 very insecure, And of course you had a frightening increase 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:07.479 in suicide, which I think is partially associated with cyber 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:11.800 bullying and cyber isolation. And so I think her role 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.760 in this was a great place for her to focus 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:33.240 her prestige and her experience. But it wouldn't have happened 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:37.320 I think without your organization. RAIN. Talk about how RAIN 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:39.399 came to be and what its focus is. 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:44.080 Sure so RAIN is the largest anti sexual violence organization 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:47.840 in the US. We work on public policy, trying to 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:51.119 improve the criminal justice system, trying to make sure that 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:55.600 more perpetrators are caught and convicted. We work on public education, 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:59.360 trying to help affect what the country understands and how 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:02.520 they react to sexual violence and motivate them to help 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:06.320 prevent further harm. And then we helped victims. We run 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.560