RESTRICT the RESTRICT Act

Date of Post: 3/30/2023


Hello.

This is not a normal blogpost. Here I will be talking about the RESTRICT Act, a legislative bill introduced earlier this month (3/07/2023). This bill has been pushed by corporate media as a misnomer named "The Ban Tik Tok Bill". However, this bill is far more portentous than that. This bill seeks not to restrict and surveil Tik Tok, but the Internet and any other data-sharing medium as a whole. The vagueness from "product" and "service" allows bureaucratic examination over any website, devices (including phones, PCs, laptops) applications, video games, and much of other things related to the Internet. Even the White House applauds this act, which means it might have a chance of passing! This is bad news for Internet privacy and increases Government power over the Internet.

In the definitions list, there is also a list of countries which are defined as "adversaries", and therefore would be illegal to buy any services from these countries.
These countries are:


Now, we are going to look at the bill itself. BUT, the definitions still contain a lot of information and are integral for understanding the context of the bill.



IN THE BILL



The bill, as it had already defined what it will be surveilling in the definitions section, addresses the reasons for such restrictions. And it is: sabotage or subversion of design, manufacturing, or communication and tech products, "catastropic effects" to security of infrastructure or digital economy of the US, interfering in elections, "undermining democratic processes," and other le big bad threats. The whole "interfering in elections" and "undermining democratic processes" has been a meme since like 2016, and has been used as an excuse since then to curb the rights of American citizens. Note that these two terms are ALSO very broad (broadness is a staple of the American law) and can also be up to interpretation by any incumbent US President, or "secretary" (That is, the Secretary of Commerce, as well as the Director of National Intelligence). Another second reason was added as well, and it is "(2) otherwise poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety of United States persons." Again, this is left vague and up to interpretation, allowing the "Secretary" (and perhaps the US three letter agencies whilst we're at it) more juristiction over what can be shut down.

Note that similar reasons were also used in making of the PATRIOT Act, an act passed by the Government under Bush after 9/11 which very much did more than make airline security more annoying, as it also included wiretapping phones, surveilling electronic communications and legalizing other ways to spy on their own citizens in the name of defeating terrorism. Like the PATRIOT Act, the RESTRICT Act seeks to undermine the Internet privacy of US citizens in the name of defeating American adversaries.

This is a larger list of what would be included in evaluating "products and services" (For the reasons cited in Sections 3 & 4 of this bill). Any software used for connecting and communicating with others which has over 1,000,000 users at any time, is subject to a possible evalution. These include:

Pretty much 99.99% of the Internet.

ALSO, There is no legislative due process, as the Secretary can establish its own rules and regulations it considers appropriate, thereby allowing the Secretary less limited control over its own powers to mitigate any "threats" to the US Government, and gives itself power to increase surveillance over what I listed above.

The secretary can also appoint "Technical Advisory Committees" to advise the Secretary in carrying out this act... Note that Chapter 10 of part 1 of title 5, United States Code does not apply to this Act. This means that lobbyists can be appointed to this "Technical Advisory Committee" to help aid the Secretary in doing his job. Because nothing screams "American Law" like allowing lobbyists more influence in the US government.

The secretary may also conduct their own investigations, hold hearings, examine witnesses, and much more regardless of whether any report has been required or filed in connection. Does this mean that the "Secretary" can start a legal case whether ot not an actual report has been filed?

If you break the rules of this act, by circumventing the bans or regulations imposed by the US bureaucrats, you can pay up to a $1,000,000 fine and be imprisoned for up to 20 years. If you, for example, use a VPN which is not compliant with the US government, it could be deemed "unsafe" and a "threat" and you could get charged for it.

The US government can also build and update lists of foreigners who can be restricted by this act While this lists is specifically for "foreign persons", it sets a bad precedent. This may very well be the beginning of a blacklist or watchlist for people whom the government deems a "national security risk", a definition which becomes more broad day by day.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), is also inapplicable to this bill. This means that any requests to the government to disclose any information submitted by someone to the Federal Government, or any information the Federal Govenment themselves creates, can and will be blocked by the Federals. Here is another part of the FOIA blocked by this act. Checks and Balances are thrown out the window in this act and, because we can't use the FOIA for the purposes of this act, it is much, much more difficult, if not impossible, to hold any politician accountable for any mess that this wretched act creates.

This bill is a threat to the privacy of hundreds of millions of US citizens who use the Internet, and this act could potentially cause a slippery slope of even more authoritarian, privacy-violating acts with fancy names which seeks to undermine the original values in which the US Bill of Rights and Constitution hold. This is the American equivalent of China's "Great Firewall", and this act is even worse than the EARN IT Act, another bill proposed by Congress to allow a backdoor into end-to-end encryption (do they know what that even means?). All in all, a bill this sinister, guised by mainstream/corporate media as the "Ban Tik Tok Bill", will have dangerous repercussions onto the people of the United States. Some may say that the slippery slope is a fallacy, but history tells otherwise, with the rise of dangerous figures including Hitler, Tojo, etc.

The whole "Democract vs Republican" meme/narrative MUST die out, as this act threatens the privacy of Democrats, Republicans, and people of other parties. This is not a left vs right issue, this is an up versus down issue, where the "up" is government bureaucrats, lobbyists (and influential US Corporations) and the "down" is US, the American People. It is important to make everyone as aware as possible about the dangers of this bill being passed, and it is about time the people of the United States of America stand up to the corrupt, increasingly tyrannical, and out-of-touch US Government. As Dr. Milton L Mueller and Dr Karim Farhat from the Georgia Institute of Technology, in their paper Tik Tok and US National Security put it: "If nationalistic fears about Chinese influence operations lead to a departure from American constitutional principles supporting free and open political discourse, we will have succeeded in undermining our system of government more effectively than any Chinese propaganda could do."

Also, this is the original page where I got much of this information from.... and here is a QR code! https://youtuube.neocities.org/restrictact