Executive Session
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, to all of my colleagues and to our staff here in the Chamber, those who are mothers, I hope they had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend, and it is a joy to return to work today. I will tell you, I am really blessed to have some of those moms. They are policy experts, and they are a part of my staff. I listen a lot to what they have to say.
Like with all of our staff, I admire their dedication and their focus--especially now and especially when it comes to discussing how this COVID crisis is affecting their children, how they are learning and how they are utilizing technology to communicate and practicing distance learning and hearing what schools are doing as they are all going through a learning curve. We are all going through a learning curve on how to utilize technology.
The thing that is so significant, as I talked to so many of these working moms and dads, what we realize and they realize and what they highlight with me is that embodied in this technology, we have a lot of dangers that exist and vulnerabilities that are being created to the privacy of our children.
Long before students were forced to attend classes via webcam, Congress began taking a hard look at how the companies providing digital classrooms were protecting what I term the ``virtual you''--you and your presence online--how they were protecting that virtual you of underage users.
As it turns out, what we found in the work that we were doing--some of it I did while I was in the House, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology of Energy and Commerce, and some of that work I continued here. But back in 2015, as we started doing a deeper dive on what was happening with protecting privacy and presence online, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint with the FTC against Google, alleging that their Google for Education platform was exploiting students' personal information and potentially exposing it to third parties.
Think about this. The Google for Education program--kids were logging on, and they were using this. Google--what were they doing? Data mining. What were they doing with what they were data mining, which is your information? They were then sharing that with third parties. And guess what. You didn't know. The parents didn't know, and the children didn't know. What we found out was that one wrong click, and any program administrator could expose a student's virtual you to potential outside websites. A 2017 report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation confirmed and expanded on these concerns. Even free products can come at the cost of student privacy.
Last month, Google donated 4,000 Chromebooks to students in rural California--4,000 Chromebooks. That sounds like a very generous donation, a way to help close that digital divide, a way to connect students to the internet, to open up the world and bring the world in to them. The problem is that this year, the State of New Mexico sued Google over a similar program, alleging that Google was using Chromebooks to track students. Well, how about that? Here you go. Here is a free Chromebook. Use it. But what happens? All of that research work you were doing via Google is being data-mined, tracked, and shared.
We need to be wary of these free programs because what we now know is that when it is free, you and your information and your child's information is tracked, it is data-mined, and it is shared. That means that you and your information are the product--the freebie, if you will. The Chromebook is simply the way, the mechanism to take your information from you and allow Google or Big Tech to have it, and then they sell it to somebody over here who is going to do what with it? Guess what. They are going to be marketing back to you. That data is a valuable resource, and what do they do once they have data-mined it? They are going to sell it to whoever is willing to pay the highest price so they can use it and market back to you and your kids something that they want you to buy. Now, that is what is happening.
I am sure everyone remembers the video platform Zoom. Many of us have probably used it in meetings even today. Zoom was thrust into the spotlight as we started this COVID crisis, and after watchdogs uncovered not only a research and development presence in China but protocols that allowed data, including--now, I want you to listen to this. This is one of those buyer beware things--user beware. We are talking about Zoom. What was discovered was that Zoom allowed data, including screen captures and video--that means you on screen; you, your face, and video; what you are saying; the presentation you are making; the question you are asking--all of that to flow in and out of China.
Schools, corporations, and even Senate offices have all been forced to question this platform, to give up this platform and to find some other way to communicate. We know that many of our children are going to school in Zoom classrooms every day. In our churches, our choirs are singing on Zoom, and sermons are being delivered on Zoom.
The rise in mandatory use of technology by students prompted me, along with Senators Markey, Hawley, Blumenthal, Cassidy, and Durbin, to ask the FTC to launch a major investigation into how these platforms are protecting student privacy. What we are wanting to know is, what are you doing to put that wall there so that the information of these underage users, these children, is not going to be shared? What are you doing to make certain that their faces, their images, their voices, and their questions are not going to be captured? Can you imagine anything more frightening than to think your child is sitting in a Zoom classroom, and this data is flowing to China, and somebody is capturing these images, and then that is going to be shared with somebody you don't know. You don't know what they are going to do with it, and you don't know why they want it, and you, as a parent, have chosen to completely stay off social media because you don't want that kind of intrusion into your child's life.
Don't you think that these corporations ought to figure this out, that this is an area of concern for moms and dads and grandmoms and granddads, to protect these children? Oh, but it doesn't matter to China, does it? All China is interested in is making a buck off the American consumer. They feel like, if you use our service, we have got that right. I think we need to be sending a message to them.
Both the education technology and the digital advertising industries are notoriously opaque about their privacy policies. I am joined by other members of the Judiciary Committee Tech Task Force in having conversations with many of these companies, and I will tell you, we have made some progress. I have been pleased with many of the companies' willingness to share with us some of these policies and to look for ways that we can protect unsuspecting consumers and our precious children
Since the FTC is preparing to consider revisions to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA, now is the perfect time. It is the necessary time for a deep dive into the data collection and processing practices of these firms.
You know what, sometimes we hear the phrase ``Oh, let's do it for the children.'' ``This is for the children.'' ``We have to do this or that for the children.'' Let me tell you something right now: This is one of those things that are absolutely for the children, to protect them online so that Big Tech and some of these China-owned companies--and bear in mind, colleagues, if you are doing business in China and if you are a company in China, who are you owned by? Who do you answer to? You answer to the Chinese Communist Party. I will tell you right now, I do not want them to have images of our children, data on where they sit, where they go to school, and what their interests are.
These privacy policies have to be reviewed. We want to make absolutely sure that the FTC has all the facts they need to be certain we keep children safe online. Section 6 of the FTC Act empowers them to do this. I urge agency officials to make use of that authority. This is an imperative. The pandemic has shown us that it only takes a little disruption to prompt bad actors to take advantage of a situation.
Here in the U.S., even during a pandemic, we have the right to challenge laws that we feel are unjust. But in many places around the world, the pandemic has provided an opportunity for oppressive regimes to enact so-called emergency laws that restrict human rights without justification or oversight. China and Russia--two of the big offenders--have used the crisis to ramp up their use of surveillance to restrict privacy and freedom of movement. ``We have to do it. We have a pandemic.'' That is what they say.
In Bolivia and the Philippines, government officials are using the pandemic as an excuse to silence their legislative bodies and punish critics. ``Oh, leave it to us. We are going to be able to solve this. You don't need to weigh in.'' That is what they are saying.
In Cambodia, Venezuela, Belarus, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa, and many other countries, officials are following China's playbook and preventing the journalists from publishing news that contradicts official propaganda. ``Don't bother with the truth. We are going to make up a version of the truth and then that is what we are going to tell people. Don't listen to anything else. Listen to us. We have truth coming at you. We are making it up as we go.'' That is what they are saying.
The way they are using surveillance to limit freedom and to craft a message is something that should frighten everyone. It is all happening under the guise of ``combating COVID-19.''
So last week, Senator Markey and I filed a bill that will help address these abuses. I thank Senator Markey for the great work he does on human rights and also the work he and I did on the House on online privacy.
The Protecting Human Rights During Pandemic Act would require the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development--or USAID--to take actions to prevent human rights abuses in the name of coronavirus response. The bill authorizes funding through 2025 for programs that support human rights defense during and in the aftermath of harmful responses to the pandemic. Congress would receive strategic plans from the State Department and USAID detailing how those funds are being put to use, as well as regular reports on human rights violations perpetrated in the name of pandemic response.
The spread of COVID-19 has forced businesses, families, and governments to take extraordinary measures to protect human life. Some have proven effective; unfortunately, others are missing the mark. We still have much to do in terms of pandemic response, and we continue to work on it every day. But I encourage my colleagues not to let the severity of our situation distract from our responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world.
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