Senate Bill 1829S 1829

STOP CSAM Act of 2025

Crime and Law Enforcement

150 pages

senate
house
president

Introduced May 21, 2025 by Joshua David Hawley · Last progress May 21, 2025

Bill Summary

Summary

Strengthens legal protections and remedies for children who are victims or witnesses of sexual abuse and child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and increases obligations and penalties for online service providers that host, promote, or fail to report CSAM. It expands protected categories and definitions, creates stronger presumptions against public disclosure of victim information, funds guardian ad litem and restitution-trustee mechanisms, and adds new civil and criminal liability and reporting requirements for large and interactive online providers. The bill requires faster and more detailed CyberTipline reporting to NCMEC, creates tiered civil and criminal penalties for providers that knowingly fail to report or preserve material, authorizes private civil suits against providers for certain conduct (including no statute of limitations for those claims), and provides courts new tools to protect victims and hold violators accountable while preserving encryption protections and State/Tribal remedies.

Key Points

Expands protections for child victims/witnesses, creates a presumption against public disclosure of protected information, and increases court remedies for violations.
Requires faster, more detailed CyberTipline reporting to NCMEC and clarifies preservation obligations; reporting rules take effect 120 days after enactment.
Creates new civil causes of action against interactive computer service providers and app stores for hosting, promoting, or facilitating CSAM and related offenses, with no statute of limitations.
Imposes tiered civil and criminal penalties on providers that knowingly fail to report or preserve CSAM; civil penalties can be tripled when individuals are harmed.
Authorizes courts to appoint trustees to hold restitution for child and incapacitated victims and funds guardian ad litem appointments ($25M/year) and trustee functions ($15M/year).
Makes substantial statutory changes to child-victim restitution calculations and expands covered offenses that trigger restitution.
Clarifies that 47 U.S.C. §230 does not block claims under the new provider civil remedy; preserves encryption protections and compliance with legal process.
Adds a new felony-style offense for providers that intentionally host, make available, or knowingly promote child pornography or related sexual-exploitation offenses.
Requires large providers (size/revenue thresholds) to file annual public reports to the Attorney General and FTC about CSAM prevention and CyberTipline activity.
Preserves State and Tribal laws and other federal remedies and includes a severability clause.

Pros & Cons

The bill strengthens protections, restitution, enforcement, and civil remedies for child sexual-exploitation victims and funds victim services, but does so at the cost of large new liabilities and compliance burdens for online providers, potential privacy and platform-functionality impacts, reduced court transparency in some cases, and increased litigation and administrative complexity.

Potential Benefits

Children and other covered victims will have stronger privacy protections and new court enforcement tools to limit public exposure of identifying and sensitive records, reducing the risk of retraumatization and unauthorized disclosures.
Survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation (including minors and incapacitated victims) gain expanded paths to compensation and services: broader restitution eligibility, court-appointed trustees to hold payments, a Child Pornography Victims Reserve funded by fines, a statutory liquidated-damages option, and mechanisms to administer payments reliably.
Law enforcement and NCMEC will receive faster, standardized reporting and preservation requirements (e.g., 60-day preservation), matching tools, and increased platform transparency reporting, improving investigators' ability to identify victims and preserve evidence.

Potential Drawbacks

Major online platforms face large statutory damages, potential punitive awards, and no statute of limitations for some claims, creating substantial legal exposure that could push platforms to remove lawful content, disable features (including privacy-preserving features), raise prices, or reduce services.
Extensive reporting, preservation, and data-sharing obligations (including account identifiers and communications) impose significant compliance costs on providers, create privacy risks for lawful users, and may chill lawful platform research and safety engineering efforts.
Stronger secrecy presumptions, broad definitions of protected information, and retroactive application could reduce public access to court records, spur litigation over sealing, hinder defense access in criminal cases, and create legal uncertainty about past disclosures.