It sounds absurd, but as my newest video shows, that's really happening.
How can that be? Doesn't America's Constitution say government may not impose "excessive fines"?
It happens because some bureaucrats, savoring their power, act like tyrants.
At least now there is hope for a remedy. One of these excessive fine cases has reached the Supreme Court.
Ken Jouppi worked as a pilot in Alaska for 30 years, until one day, state troopers stopped his plane before takeoff.
"I didn't think we had anything to hide," he says. "They searched the airplane, opened up this lady's boxes of groceries and found beer."
Transporting beer. That was his crime.
"Isn't beer legal in America?" I ask Jouppi's lawyer, Mike Greenberg.
"In most places," he replies. But some towns in Alaska ban beer.
Jouppi was convicted of bootlegging.
Every pilot must know which town has what rule, and search everybody?
"They think pilots should search people's luggage," says Jouppi. "It was such a terrible thing to do to another individual, invade their privacy, and assault their dignity….I just didn't feel right about doing that."
"That airplane was my primary source of income," says Jouppi. "Without it, I didn't have a business anymore."
I assumed such excessive punishment would be dismissed quickly by a court. But it wasn't.
"Jouppi has been fighting to keep his plane for 14 years," says Greenberg. "The plane is still sitting on a tarmac….It's a ludicrous situation where the state has every interest in going after valuable assets rather than actually fighting supposed harms of alcohol."
Greenberg's law firm, the Institute for Justice, took Jouppi's case, and now the U.S. Supreme Court will hear it.
I hope he wins. It's just wrong when governments destroy lives for small mistakes.
They're also doing that to Tuncay Saydam, a retired professor.
The IRS demands he pay $400,000 because he didn't know to fill out a one-page form about an old bank account in his native Turkey.
"The fines," says Saydam, "will destroy my life….We have never been rich."
His unpaid tax is less than $30,000. But the IRS demands he pay them more than $400,000. A California court upheld that penalty. Northern Californian Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu wrote, "Government suffered a significant tax loss."
When they saw greenhouses, they fined property owners.
Blu Graham was fined $900,000, "$30,000 a day, when all I've ever done is grow vegetables in my greenhouses."
"There actually was no marijuana on the property!" says Greenberg. "They were just guessing that if you built a greenhouse, this must be connected to marijuana."
Finally, a lawsuit got the county to promise to end its ruinous fine system.
But it took four years.
Why do governments fight to keep outrageous fines that punish largely innocent people?
"Unlike other forms of punishment," says Greenberg, "fines make the government money. The prosecutor's office, state troopers, they get to keep the proceeds. It's an abusive system because they have every incentive to continue to prosecute."
I invited the heavy-fining judges and government lawyers to appear in my video to explain these fines. None would agree to talk about it.
Bureaucrats always want more money. It's a reason the Constitution prohibits excessive fines.
I trust that the Supreme Court will put a stop to these abuses.
Kimberly Guilfoyle today resigned from her position as the U.S. ambassador to Greece shortly after the White House confirmed that President Donald Trump had asked her to do so. The main provocation seems to have been Guilfoyle's alleged influence peddling, which reportedly featured a request that Republican donor Eric Deters pay off her $100,000 American Express bill, in exchange for which she promised him special access to "Trump world."
The president signaled his displeasure on Monday, saying "we're looking at" axing Guilfoyle, his son's former girlfriend, because "we're not happy." On Tuesday, Trump added that "we didn't like what we were reading." That reaction is not surprising, since Guilfoyle would have been horning in on Trump's territory by trying to sell access and use her office for personal gain. That's histhing.
Consider Trump's attempts to promote the memecoin that he launched three days before beginning his second term. That April, the top 220 $TRUMP holders were invited to "an intimate private dinner" with the president on May 22. The "top 25 coin holders" were promised "an Exclusive Reception before Dinner with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT," plus a "Special VIP Tour" of the White House the next day. The coin's price, which after an initial surge had fallen dramatically since Inauguration Day, rose by more than 50 percent immediately after that announcement.
"Since the announcement, crypto investors around the world have raced to expand their holdings of $TRUMP," The New York Timesreported 10 days before the dinner. "Certain buyers, in interviews and statements, have said they bought the coins or entered the dinner contest with the intention of securing an action by Mr. Trump to affect United States policy."
NBC reported that the coin investors who attended the dinner, which was held at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, had collectively spent $394 million on $TRUMP. On average, that worked out to about $1.8 million a plate.
"This is my president that we're talking about, but I am willing to say that this gives me pause," Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R–Wyo.) said a few weeks before the dinner. "In abstract," Sen. Thom Tillis (R–N.C.) allowed, the event "is hard to understand." Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) drew an analogy: "I don't think it would be appropriate for me to charge people to come into the Capitol and take a tour."
Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, was blunter. "This is one of the most blatant and appalling instances of selling access to the presidency I've ever seen," he said.
Compared to that episode, the controversy over the income that Trump's hotel in Washington, D.C., received from influence seekers during his first term might seem tame. But it raised similar ethical questions, albeit in a slightly more subtle way.
The Trump International Hotel's customers included Republican political organizations and a long list of trade groups, such as the National Mining Association, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the National Confectioners Association, and the Vapor Technology Association, whose interests might be served by currying favor with the president. The hotel also attracted business from the governments of foreign countries, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, and Romania, that likewise may have been investing in Trump's good will.
"Believe me, all the delegations will go there," a "Middle Eastern diplomat" toldThe Washington Post after Trump's election. "Why wouldn't I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, 'I love your new hotel!'" an "Asian diplomat" said. "Isn't it rude to come to his city and say, 'I am staying at your competitor'?" The Embassy of Kuwait, which had previously held its annual National Day celebration at the Four Seasons, reportedly canceled its reservation there and switched to the president-elect's hotel under pressure from the Trump Organization.
Trump saw no problem with any of this. "The law is totally on my side," he toldThe New York Times in November 2016. "The president can't have a conflict of interest." He reiterated that take at a press conference nine days before his inauguration. "I have a no-conflict situation because I'm president," he said.
Trump nevertheless said he would donate the profits from money spent by foreign governments at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury. But that solution did not address the money he was taking in from various domestic interest groups or his ability to enrich himself by encouraging Republican organizations or other federal officials to patronize his businesses.
One example of the latter: Vice President Mike Pence and his party stayed at Trump's golf resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, during an official trip in 2019. Although Trump insisted he "had nothing to do" with that decision, critics perceived a violation of the Domestic Emoluments Clause, which says the president may not receive additional compensation from the federal government beyond his official salary.
Trump later said he regretted his attempts to address conflicts of interest during his first term, including his promise that the Trump Organization would avoid new foreign business deals. "I prohibited [my sons] from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it," he toldThe New York Times 12 days before his second inauguration. "I didn't have to do that, and it's really unfair to them." The lesson he drew was that "nobody cared."
Consistent with that assessment, Trump has thrown all caution to the wind during his second term, capitalizing on his position to rake in millions of dollars by hawking all manner of presidentially branded merchandise, ranging from bibles to cologne; obtain a $400 million "palace in the sky" from the government of Qatar; extort $1 billion in pro bono legal work from disfavored law firms; earn billions from the same cryptocurrency industry he was simultaneously deregulating; and arrange a sweet IRS immunity deal that could save him more than $100 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties. Any worries about unseemly profiteering by Trump's family are long gone, as evidenced by federal contracts with businesses backed by his sons and highly lucrative foreign deals negotiated by his son-in-law.
Compared to all of that, the $100,000 that Guilfoyle allegedly sought in exchange for using her influence with the Trump administration to help Deters looks like pocket change. Her real sin, one suspects, was failing to offer her boss a piece of the action.
Ammon Bundy was once considered the face of America's far-right militia movement. Now he's speaking out against President Donald Trump and his treatment of immigrants.
"How do you demonize them to the point where they should be rounded up by armed men in the government, kicking down their doors and dragging them off?" Bundy tells Reason.
Bundy views Trump's violent, indiscriminate immigration crackdown as just the latest example of how an oversized, tyrannical United States government is stomping on individual rights. Bundy has sacrificed a lot for his beliefs, including serving a two-year stint in federal prison (though he was ultimately acquitted) and being stripped of his property. It hasn't stopped Bundy from continuing to fight for what he believes in.
The anti-government activist first entered the national spotlight in 2014 when he joined his father, Cliven Bundy, in an armed standoff against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at the elder Bundy's Bunkerville, Nevada, ranch. The BLM had impounded 400 of Cliven's cattle after a decades-long disagreement over land rights had ended with Cliven's refusal to pay his grazing fees. Cliven and Ammon solicited militias from around the country to join them in confronting the federal agents guarding the confiscated cattle. The show of force caused the BLM to stand down and release the cows. The conflict, closely followed by the national media, made Ammon and his father celebrities and established a pattern in which the younger Bundy would aggressively challenge what he deemed to be the federal government's violation of individual rights.
Just two years later, Bundy championed the cause of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were imprisoned for allegedly setting fires on federal land adjacent to their property. Bundy says their prosecution was simply another power play by the government. Rather than accept the United States Court of Appeals decision to re-sentence the Hammonds to an additional five years, Bundy led a group of armed followers to occupy the nearby Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon to protest the court's decision. Again, the national media spotlight was on Bundy. The occupation, which lasted 41 days, ended with an FBI ambush, resulting in the death of one of Bundy's allies, an Arizona rancher named LaVoy Finicum.
"They shot him three times in the back, and he died in the snow," lamented Bundy.
Bundy and his allies were arrested on January 26, 2016. The FBI simultaneously pursued charges against Bundy for the Oregon occupation and the earlier Bunkerville standoff. He faced life in prison. After spending about two years locked up, he was acquitted of all charges. Then on July 10th of 2018, Trump pardoned the Hammonds, and they were released from prison.
"That wouldn't have happened if we hadn't made such a big deal out of it," continued Bundy.
Bundy was living in Idaho during the COVID-19 pandemic and was arrested multiple times for protesting lockdown measures. In 2022 he challenged Idaho's Republican establishment by running for governor as an independent. Two months before the primary, the 10-month-old grandson of Ammon's campaign manager was taken by Child Protective Services after doctors at St. Luke's Hospital in Boise suspected the parents were neglecting the child's health. Bundy, furious, accused St. Luke's of kidnapping. The child was returned to his parents six days later, but St. Luke's sued Bundy and his campaign manager, saying they bullied and intimidated staff while disrupting business at the hospital. With the lawsuit pending, Bundy lost the election to the Republican incumbent, Brad Little, though received 17 percent of the vote. Bundy did not show up in court, and he and his co-defendants were ordered to pay St. Luke's nearly $53 million in damages. Bundy's home and most of his assets were seized. He faced the possibility of another lengthy jail sentence.
"They got a gag order against me where I couldn't speak about (the baby) Cyrus's case. And of course, I kept speaking about it. They kept getting contempt charges until finally they ended up getting a $250,000 bond against me, and I had to leave the state."
Bundy fled with his wife and five kids to Cedar City, Utah, where a friend offered them a one-room attic apartment. He joined his brother's diesel truck parts business and was eventually able to move his family into a house.
After vocally opposing Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric during his first run for president, Ammon continued to criticize Trump in his second term, drawing parallels between the federal agents who seized his father's cattle and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents acting with impunity in American cities.
"If I and my family were threatened by federal agents in an unconstitutional way, I would do all I could to oppose them. In fact, I have pretty good experience with that," Bundy said in a Facebook post during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis in early 2026.
In 2025, Bundy circulated a self-published essay titled, "The Stranger: A Christian and Constitutional Case for Protecting Those Who Come to America." In the essay, Bundy argues that treating immigrants like criminals simply for lacking "official permission" to cross the United States border violates constitutional ideals and defies the spirit of an American society built by legal and "illegal" immigrants. He also draws heavily on scripture to assert that Christians have a spiritual calling to protect and welcome immigrants.
Bundy's criticisms of Trump's immigration crackdown has cost Bundy friends, including some of his allies from Oregon and Bunkerville. He had a falling out with one former ally who "was bragging about how the ICE agent pulled his gun so fast," to shoot and kill Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old intensive care nurse in Minneapolis. The ally "was someone that literally went to prison with us," continues Bundy. "How in the world do you take that position, after having federal weapons pointed at you? How could you possibly say something like that? It's disgusting."
Despite recent dust-ups with friends and supporters, Bundy remains in high demand for guidance and inspiration. While Reason was filming Bundy in his small auto parts shop fulfilling orders, a friend called him to ask for advice on legal troubles. Bundy reassured him and asked him to send the paperwork over so he could be of better assistance. That inclination just seems to be second nature for Bundy. He's always ready to lend a helping hand, while simultaneously advocating for personal responsibility.
"If you want a healthy nation, you must look at an individual and protect those liberties, protect those freedoms," says Bundy.
As for how Bundy feels about the direction of our current government—it's unflinching.
"Like George Washington said, government is like a fire. It can be a useful tool or a terrible master. And a terrible master is what our government has become."
Photo Credits: Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA/Newscom ; Mike Stotts/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Andy Nelson/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS/Newscom; Sean Madden/Planetpix/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Prentice C. James/Cal Sport Media/Newscom; Mark Black/ZUMA Press/Newscom; John Nacion/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Jeremy Hogan/Polaris/Newscom; Karen Focht/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Sarah A. Miller/TNS/Newscom; facebook/realammonbundy; Benjamin Hanson/Middle East Images/StringersHub/Sipa USA/Newscom; Charles Reed/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Carol Guzy/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Dave Decker/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; EyePress/Newscom; Roberto E. Rosales/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Carol Guzy/TNS/Newscom; Allison Dinner/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; National Archives; Library of Congress; Elijah Scott/SiPA USA/Elijah Scott/Sipa USA/Newscom; Jen Golbeck/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Lela Edgar/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; CNP/AdMedia/SIPA/Newscom; Chris Kleponis - CNP/CNP / Polaris/Newscom; Wayne Gooden/Image of Sport/Newscom
Music Credits: "The Tomorrow War" by Or Chausha via Artlist; "Under Pressure" by Michael Kobrin via Artlist; "Beyond the Stories" by Ian Post via Artlist; "Long Road" by Oakfield via Artlist; "Railroad" by Max H. via Artlist; "Hidden Answers" by FableForte via Artlist; "Foreboding" by Kyle Preston via Artlist; "Whodunit" by FableForte via Artlist; "No Decides" by Or Chausha via Artlist; "Witness" by Oliver Michael via Artlist; "It Comes at Night" by Adam Dib via Artlist; "Dusty Roads" by FableForte via Artlist; "Lullaby" by Assaf Ayalon via Artlist; "Unsettled" by Matt Evans via Artlist; "Uneasy Atmosphere" by Matt Evans via Artlist; "Reset" by sero via Artlist; "Dream Life" by DJ Taz Rashid via Artlist; "Can't Lose You" by The Likes of Us via Artlist; "From the Ground Up" by Earth Tone via Artlist; "Pianissimo" by Adrián Berenguer via Artlist; "Washed Away" by Mark Grundhoefer
A 61-year-old doctor has been arrested in the Algarve on suspicion of raping a patient during a consultation at a private clinic in Albufeira. The crime allegedly occurred in June
A few years ago, Sebastian Barry—whose collected literary works, drawn from family history and lore, offer “a loser’s history of 20th-century Ireland”—announced that the final novel in his series would tackle the relationship between his parents. “The declaration seemed to set the table for a feast of disclosure,” writes Giles Harvey, who spoke with Barry for more than a year as the novel took shape. But the feast never arrived. The “career-spanning profile” Harvey once suggested to Barry becomes a study of abuse, memory, and revelation—one Barry’s forte, and now, perhaps, his greatest struggle.
Barry and I corresponded for the next year and a half, during which the novel appeared to be on course. Then, in July of last year, he sent me a surprising email. Something had happened in the time since his father died, Barry explained. “Where there was once a great need to proclaim aloud,” he wrote — neglecting to specify just what it was he’d felt the need to proclaim — Barry now found himself in a different state of mind. “A matter I thought so urgent and in need of saying” had come to seem better served by a “strange new beneficent silence.”
A young mother on the island of Crete confessed to judicial authorities on Tuesday that she had beaten her newborn baby. The 17-day-old infant is in critical condition and is struggling for its life with heave head injuries in the ICU of the Neonatal ICU in Heraklion. The 18-year-old mother apologized for beating her newborn […]
Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for his work on a disease in Papua New Guinea. But his biggest experiment was on the children he took from the field to the US—many of whom he sexually molested, with the knowledge and, in some cases, approval of his professional peers and colleagues:
In his journals and in letters to colleagues, Gajdusek was self-righteous, arguing that what he’d done was “no more serious than lying on the grass or picking a dandelion,” and he cited the Anga initiation rites as justification. These ceremonies had brought boys into their communities, as part of a shared passage into manhood, but Gajdusek treated them as a timeless license for the acts that he’d committed privately, one boy at a time. George Klein, a professor at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, who was part of the Nobel Assembly for thirty-six years, validated Gajdusek’s opinions, telling him that he wondered if “the Western world can ‘catch up with you.’” He wrote, “I share your indignation about the typically Jewish-Christian-Moslem hypocrisy on sexual matters.” Gajdusek was troubled, though, by how many colleagues wrote letters saying that they knew the charges must be untrue. “I thought better of my friends,” he said. “They are dissimulating and lying.”
Four turtles rescued from a fire-stricken area in northern Greece were found to have been abused by human thugs who painted their shells with orange oil paint.The discovery prompted the intervention of the Prosecutor’s Office in Thessaloniki on Tuesday. The unprecedented incident was revealed when members of the Wild Animal Rescue & Reintegration Team arrived […]
The European Union is bringing out the big guns in the face of widespread outrage over the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) violating people’s privacy and dignity.
Brussels is considering the possibility of classifying the creation of sexual deepfakes as a prohibited practice under the Artificial Intelligence Act following the scandal involving sexualised images created by Grok AI, the chatbot integrated into Elon Musk’s X platform.
Grok outrage
Musk’s company xAI – after prolonged international criticism – has introduced new restrictions in mid-January on sexually suggestive AI-generated images in Grok. The move follows criticism that Grok allowed users to digitally replace women’s clothing with bikinis and, in some cases, create sexualised depictions of minors.
The first images of people being stripped naked without consent (“nudification”) began circulating in the days following the release of the feature, but their spread increased particularly around New Year’s Eve. According to CNN, between January 5 and 6 alone, Grok was used to generate at least 6,700 sexual images. These often involved women or minors.
“Grok is now offering a ‘spicy mode’ showing explicit sexual content with some output generated with childlike images. This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling,” EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters back then.
The European Commission, which acts as the bloc’s digital watchdog, said it would take note of new measures taken by X and would review them. Officials warned that if the steps prove insufficient, the EU will consider using the full scope of its Digital Services Act (DSA).
European Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen has stated that the Commission is considering explicitly banning these types of AI-generated sexual images under the AI Act, classifying them as unacceptable risks.
The prohibition of harmful practices in the field of AI could be relevant to addressing the issue of non-consensual sexual deepfakes and child pornography, said Virkkunen, who is also the responsible commissioner for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, at this week’s plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. She also said the DSA mitigated the risk of online sexual material being disseminated without consent.
She also recalled that the Commission had sent a request for information to X regarding Grok as part of its investigation into the platform under the DSA.
The platform was asked to preserve all internal documents and data relating to it until the end of the year. “We are now examining the extent to which X may in any case be in breach of the DSA and will not hesitate to take further action if the evidence suggests it,” she said.
The Commission had previously stepped up pressure on X, which was fined 120 million Euro in early December over transparency violations. The EU has insisted it will enforce its rules despite causing backlash from the US administration.
“The DSA is very clear in Europe. All platforms have to get their own house in order, because what they’re generating here is unacceptable, and compliance with EU law is not an option. It’s an obligation,” Regnier said at the height of the scandal in early January.
Last week, a group of about 50 MEPs had called on the Commission to ban artificial intelligence apps used to create nude images from the EU market.
Illustration: 12 July 2025: In this photo illustration, the xAI Grok logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI. Photo: Algi Febri Sugita/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
Can’t live without X
Despite criticism of X, nearly all senior EU officials continue to post there rather than on European alternatives, according to research by dpa.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other top officials still do not have official accounts on Mastodon, a Germany-based alternative. Virkkunen opened an official Mastodon account in January. High-ranking EU politicians are also active on Bluesky, another US-based platform currently gaining traction.
The Commission justifies continued use of X due to its reach: Mastodon has roughly 750,000 monthly users, compared with 100 million on X, according to the companies.
The long legal path towards better safety online
The path towards protection of minors in the EU is long-winded as concerns of privacy, business and protection clash. Several regulations intersect:
Chat Control
The Commission in 2022 proposed a regulation to require platforms to detect and report images and videos of abuse (child sexual abuse material or CSAM), as well as attempts by predators to contact minors.
The final legislation is expected to be negotiated in early 2026, aiming to bridge the gap between Parliament’s privacy-focused approach and the EU Council’s desire for broad voluntary scanning powers.
While extending temporary voluntary scanning measures until April 2026 to avoid a legal vacuum, MEPs have expressed urgency for a permanent solution.
October 9, 2025, Berlin: Members of the alliance “Stop Chat Control!” demonstrate in front of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Civil society organizations demonstrate in front of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Berlin against the planned EU-wide chat control and hand over more than 300,000 signatures. Photo: Fabian Sommer/dpa
DSA
The European Union uses the Digital Services Act to sanction online platforms by imposing massive fines, requiring immediate operational changes, and – as a last resort – temporarily suspending their services. It can apply fines if platforms violate DSA obligations, fail to comply with interim measures or breach commitments.
It is an EU regulation for a safer online world, requiring platforms to tackle illegal content, protect users, and increase transparency.
AI Act
The AI Act was adopted in 2024 and is the world’s first and only comprehensive legal framework in the artificial intelligence context. It establishes a risk-based system to regulate AI technologies within the EU, aiming to ensure they are safe, trustworthy, and respect fundamental rights while fostering innovation.
It bans certain unacceptable AI practices, such as social scoring, and sets rules for areas of high risk for AI use – like in critical infrastructure or employment. It also sets out restrictions on manipulative AI uses such as deepfakes targeting children, among others.
Social media bans
France, which is considering banning social media for children under 15, has been testing an age verification app developed by the European Commission since this summer. This tool is one of several methods used to verify the age of internet users, which is a headache for tech giants and authorities alike.
Individual efforts
The Spanish Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego, in early January asked the attorney general’s office to investigate whether Grok may be committing crimes related to the dissemination of child sexual abuse material.
Currently, Spain is developing its own law for the protection of minors in digital environments. The law strengthens the framework for protecting personal integrity and privacy against new forms of violation linked to the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence, reaffirming that the best interests of the child must always prevail over any digital business model.
Bulgaria has stepped up efforts to combat online child sexual abuse through international law enforcement cooperation, national prevention campaigns and policy discussions aligned with EU legislation. In 2025, Bulgarian authorities took part in a major international operation that shut down Kidflix, one of the world’s largest platforms for child sexual exploitation, used between 2022 and 2025 by nearly 2 million users.
Romania has legislative mechanisms in place to combat child sexual abuse material through its criminal code, and the authorities are seeking to expand and modernise these rules.
Since 2025 an important bill on the protection of children online (called the Online Age of Majority Law) has been under parliamentary debate, and Romania is also gradually participating in and implementing EU rules on the prevention and combating of online sexual abuse. The Online Age of Majority Law introduces mandatory age verification and parental consent for minors (under 16) to access online services such as social media, gaming and streaming platforms.
EU candidate country Bosnia and Herzegovina still has no specific law regulating this area. In BiH, criminal liability for the production, distribution and possession of such material is based on criminal laws that cover the sexual exploitation of children, but do not contain explicit provisions on AI-generated or simulated content.
The EU has put into place a set of complementary tools and measures to protect its citizens – young and old – from harmful practices online, but weak points include challenges in enforcement, algorithmic amplification of harm, inconsistent national implementation, and debates over balancing security with privacy.
This article is an ENR Key Story. The content is based on information published by ENR participating agencies.
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