Sponsors (4)
The bill strengthens law-enforcement access and technical safeguards for handling child sexual abuse material to improve investigations and reduce breaches, but it raises significant privacy risks for victims, limits vendor accountability, and may increase costs for governments and taxpayers.
Law enforcement and prosecutors can contract with vetted U.S.-based storage vendors to retain and process child sexual abuse material more securely, improving the ability to investigate and prosecute offenders.
State, local, and federal agencies must use vendors that meet NIST cybersecurity standards, undergo annual independent audits, and implement encryption, reducing the risk of data breaches and unauthorized disclosure of sensitive material.
Law enforcement agencies get clear evidence-retention rules requiring preservation of material at least as long as statutes of limitations or sentence/post-conviction review periods, improving continuity for prosecutions and appeals.
Victims—particularly children—face increased privacy and abuse risks because vendors are granted broad access to extremely sensitive material, and those controls could fail or be circumvented.
Taxpayers and victims may have reduced legal remedies because the bill limits civil and criminal liability for vendors, which could lower incentives for careful handling and reduce accountability when harm occurs.
State and local governments (and ultimately taxpayers) may face higher costs and operational complications because mandating storage within the U.S. can increase hosting expenses and complicate cross-border evidence access.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Grants limited liability protections to vendors that store/process child sexual abuse material for law enforcement, conditioned on strict security, access, encryption, and annual independent-review requirements.
Creates a new legal framework that lets law enforcement contract with approved cloud/storage vendors to store and process child sexual abuse material (child pornography and child obscenity) and limits most civil and criminal claims against those vendors for carrying out those duties. It requires vendors to meet strict security, access, minimization, encryption, and independent-review requirements and preserves liability only for intentional or reckless misconduct or actions unrelated to the contract. The change affects federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies and the private companies they hire: vendors gain liability protections but must follow specified cybersecurity and access controls; agencies gain clearer authority to use vendor services for storage, analysis, and forensic work on such material while the public and civil-rights groups may raise concerns about oversight and accountability.
Introduced March 5, 2026 by Laurel Lee · Last progress March 5, 2026