A new bill – S. 1080 or the Copper Davis Act – will require social media companies to report drug related activity on their platforms to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
The bill would amend the Controlled Substances Act to require “electronic communication service providers and remote computing services to report to the Attorney General certain controlled substances violations.”
This would include the manufacture, sale and distribution of drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamine.
The bill has been put forward in a bid to try and curb the fentanyl crisis, however, Senator Ron Wyden has opposed the bill, stating it would perpetuate the disproportionate impact of the war on drugs on communities of colour and would lead to these communities being put under a disproportionate amount of surveillance.
Wyden stated: “There is no question that there is a fentanyl epidemic in the United States. However, this bill fails to offer serious solutions to this epidemic. Instead, it would mandate that platforms scan their users’ communications for anything that could be interpreted as being about selling or using drugs.
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“Given this country’s experience with the failed `War on Drugs’ it is easy to predict that communities of colour will disproportionately have their conversations surveilled and referred for prosecutions, which is why it is opposed by civil rights groups, including the ACLU, NAACP and Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“Further, forcing a platform to decide what represents a drug transaction means that lots of innocent people will be referred for investigation and prosecution. Finally, the reporting structure of this legislation is likely to produce large numbers of meritless referrals to the Drug Enforcement Administration and do little to address the real causes of the fentanyl epidemic or protect vulnerable communities.
“Given these concerns, I will object to any unanimous consent request in relation to this legislation.”
Social media companies that do not report such activity to the DEA will be imposed with a fine of $190,000 in the first instance and $380,000 following.
