Congress’s Child-Safety Bill Is Trying To Hitch A Ride On A Tank

Supporters of the STOP CSAM Act are pushing to attach the online child-protection measure to the annual defense policy bill. Roll Call reports that the language is in a proposed Senate manager’s amendment but absent from the House-passed version.

That is where we are. A major argument about technology companies’ responsibility for child sexual abuse material is looking for a seat on the military bus.

Please keep your policy questions out of the aisle. The Pentagon needs to get through.

The bipartisan measure would increase platform accountability and allow victims to sue companies that promoted or facilitated abuse. Its backers want real consequences for companies that help enable terrible harm. Civil-liberties groups, meanwhile, warn that broad liability could push platforms away from end-to-end encryption, weakening privacy for everyone.

Those sound like issues a legislature should work through.

Fortunately, we have one. It is currently trying to fit the discussion into the overhead compartment next to national defense.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the measure unanimously in June 2025. Now, with another election about to pass, advocates are looking toward the lame-duck session and negotiations over a different bill.

A unanimous committee vote, followed by more than a year of trying to get somewhere. Congress has invented an elevator where every passenger presses the same button and the building tells them to try the stairs.

Who designed this? Who looked at a serious, difficult policy dispute and decided the ideal next step was to wait until November, put it in a camouflage jacket and see whether it could get past the House?

I understand legislative vehicles. I understand that attaching a measure to something likely to move can be practical. I also understand that a sofa strapped to a hatchback is technically a transportation solution. At some point, somebody should ask why we cannot afford a fucking truck.

And then comes the argument about the argument.

A letter from more than 100 organizations supporting the bill says removing the provisions would represent a victory for online predators. The urgency is understandable. The people harmed deserve more than another season of congressional throat-clearing.

But the ACLU and other critics are raising concerns about encryption. Congress ought to answer those concerns, not leave the public to choose between a moral emergency and a technical footnote nobody has explained.

Does the language create that risk? Can it be narrowed? What does accountability require, and what would platforms actually do?

These are questions for the people writing the law. Asking them should not require everybody in the room to first prove they dislike child abuse.

I need a minute. The entire point of having lawmakers is supposed to be that they can do something more demanding than choose a sympathetic bill title and locate a moving object to tape it to.

The technology companies do not get a free pass either. Roll Call asked Google, Meta, Snap and X for their current positions; none responded. Lobbying disclosures alone do not reveal whether a company supports or opposes a bill. Google backed an earlier version.

So the public gets a proposed attachment, a high-stakes dispute and some corporate silence. Somewhere in all of that, we are meant to locate the actual rules.

Protecting children deserves a law that works. Protecting private communications deserves a serious answer. Congress is paid to do the difficult work of reconciling those obligations.

It could start by giving the subject its own chair instead of asking whether it fits inside an armored vehicle.