‘This is a big issue’: Senate passes bill mandating access to minors’ social media messages

Gus Bilirakis seeks to bring more decency online.

A bill meant to protect minors from online predators by allowing more access to their social media messages is bound for the House after clearing the Legislature’s upper chamber with bipartisan support.

Senators voted 34-3 for SB 868, which would require social media companies to retool their end-to-end encryption systems so law enforcement can view kids’ messages under warrant or subpoena.

The bill would also require companies to guarantee parents access to their children’s online communications and prohibit platforms like Instagram and Snapchat from allowing kids to use messages that disappear.

“This is a big issue,” said the bill’s sponsor, Spring Hill Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia.

“There are bad actors online targeting minors. They’re targeting our kids and our grandkids with either sexually explicit, sexually suggestive materials or are targeting them for meeting up to have inappropriate relations. Encryption used by social media companies makes it more challenging, if not impossible, for law enforcement to retrieve the proof to put these guys behind bars.”

Democratic Sens. Shevrin Jones, Tina Polsky, and Carlos G. Smith voted against the bill. Polsky and Smith also opposed the bill in the Committee. So did Boynton Beach Sen. Lori Berman, but she switched her vote on the floor.

Jones pressed Ingoglia on Thursday on what he argued were weaknesses and problems with the legislation. He raised questions about whether SB 868 could weaken encryption that protects user data and inadvertently expose minors to more harm. He also asked how companies would be able to verify the age of users to enforce the bill’s provisions “without collecting excessive personal information.”

Ingoglia said that while the original draft of his bill pushed for the removal of encryption on kids’ social media accounts, the current version instead requires companies to “engineer” changes to their systems so they can comply with its mandates.

He said one social media company has something called “secure storage” that allows users to save their encrypted messages for future use.

“It’s that separation of the encrypted message from the whole encrypted system that, through engineering, I totally believe — I know — that they’re going to be able to decrypt that, but only if they issue a subpoena or warrant,” Ingoglia said. “Look, at the end of the day, do I believe that the best way to do this is federal legislation in order to create some sort of process for them to stop online predators? Of course. But in the interim, I think we as a state should do everything we possibly can to protect our kids online.”

SB 868 and its substantively different House companion (HB 743), which awaits a House floor vote, add to legislation state lawmakers passed in 2024 limiting minors’ access to social media platforms, including prohibiting kids 13 and younger from opening and maintaining accounts and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to do so.

That restriction is now being challenged in court.

The federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which has been in effect since April 2000, requires social media companies to get verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information about their children. However, few believe it’s been effectively enforced.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, one in five children per year receive unwanted sexual solicitation online. One in 33 are targets of aggressive sexual solicitation, which involves pushes by the culprit to make offline contact. And at any given time, some 50,000 predators are on the internet actively seeking out children.

Dozens of youths and tech advocacy groups, including NetChoice and TechNet, spoke out against SB 868 during its three Committee stops. Many contended that decryption would compromise the online security of all users, citing examples of governments and private companies being breached in recent years, including several in Florida.

GrayRobinson lobbyist Chris Carmody, representing Facebook parent Meta, said that when it comes to end-to-end encryption, it’s an all-or-nothing equation.

“If you create a key to unlock it, you’ve now unlocked everything or potentially unlocked everything,” he said. “The way this bill is drafted right now, that would do just that. It would create a backdoor.”

Ingoglia rejected that assertion as an “industry talking point” that social media giants are using to skirt what in every other situation would be a clear black-and-white issue. He also balked at claims that conforming to the bill’s dictates is too tall or expensive a task to be possible for them.

“We are now in an environment today where we’re talking about AI micro-nano-computers moving through the bloodstream of humans, being able to detect cancer cells in people, potentially. That’s how advanced we’re getting,” Ingoglia said.

“They cannot tell me with a straight face that they cannot code something that can decrypt something on a one-time basis for the purpose of retrieving the evidence needed in court to put sexual predators away and then close the door right behind them.”

State Attorneys Amira Fox and Brian Haas said that social media sites aren’t helping to fix the problem, and their encryption software provides predators with camouflage.

“This is attracting a lot of people who want end-to-end encryption for nefarious purposes, so when we issue a subpoena now … we get back, ‘We don’t have anything.’ They can’t report this anymore because they can’t see it,” Fox said. “This is incredibly dangerous.”

SB 868 will next be considered alongside HB 743, which Republican Reps. Michelle Salzman of Escambia County and Tyler Sirois of Merritt Island are sponsoring.