CyberTipline Modernization Act of 2018

(Sec. 2) This bill revises reporting requirements for electronic communication service providers and remote computing service providers (providers) who report information to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) on crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children.

Currently, providers must report the facts and circumstances of incidents of apparent child pornography, of which they become aware, to NCMEC via the CyberTipline. This bill retains the existing reporting requirement and provides new authority for providers to also report the facts and circumstances that indicate a child pornography violation is imminent.

Additionally, it makes various procedural changes to the reporting requirements, including to do the following:

• grant discretion to providers to determine what information to include in a report;
• permit (currently, require) the Department of Justice (DOJ) to designate foreign law enforcement agencies to receive CyberTipline reports from NCMEC;
• allow NCMEC to forward a report to a foreign law enforcement agency in certain circumstances, even if the foreign law enforcement agency has not been designated by DOJ; and
• provide explicit permission for a provider to disclose the contents of a report, including visual depictions, to law enforcement agencies, to NCMEC, or as necessary to respond to legal process.

Finally, the bill revises and updates various statutory references, including to replace references to “images” with “visual depictions” to make reporting requirements applicable to videos, in addition to images.

Written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. All summary versions on Congress.gov