How we use the internet could fundamentally change for the foreseeable future, if the RESTRICT Bill, or Bill S. 686, is passed. This bill is a Trojan Horse for some of the most disturbing and shocking breaches of public privacy that the United States has ever seen.
Opposers of the bill have considered it to be an internet version of the Patriot Act, giving unelected bureaucrats in the Department of Commerce unrestricted access to all internet data residing in our personal devices.
This bill covers wireless local networks, VPNs, Wifi Routers, and gives the executive branch of our government the power to ban them if they are being used to contact “foreign adversaries” such as China, Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela.
The RESTRICT Act also specifies that at any point in time, the countries listed as “foreign adversaries” could be changed. Moreover, using VPNs to bypass banned apps, such as TikTok, would be made a criminal act in which the perpetrator could face 20 years of imprisonment and fines of up to $1 million.
This would give our government the ability to monitor activity on any device in which they suspect is being used to communicate with foreign adversaries, meaning if they want to, they can monitor you whenever they want, as much as they would like, without informing you.
They would have the ability to monitor routers, video games, streaming apps, ring cameras, and anything else that uses WiFi or the internet.
Bill S. 686 gives the Secretary of Commerce the power to select a group of their own who would take charge of internet monitoring and would be selected without any voter input whatsoever.
This group would also be given the ability to have closed-door meetings and would not be required to disclose any information from these meetings to the public. They would be given the power to ban anything that they see as a “risk to security” whenever they see fit and would then have the ability to go through instant messages, emails, or text messages.
We are living in an era in which communicating with each other has become simple, especially so with social media apps such as TikTok. The TikTok app has given an essentially uncensored voice to over 150 million Americans since the app launched in 2017.
I believe that our government is attempting to limit American voices and our ability to communicate with each other, share news with one another, and prevent us from organizing any sort of rebellion against them with this bill.
Lobbyists from Meta, formerly known as Facebook, Inc. are trying to convince our congresspeople to support this bill, because TikTok specifically has become a major opponent to many U.S. owned social platforms. They are losing revenue and feel threatened.
We must monitor the movement of this controversial bill, if we care about our freedom of speech and privacy at all. American citizens should be upset about this, and we should be contacting our senators to prevent this bill from moving forward. We should be fearful of the fact that our government is attempting to make immense strides at taking our rights away.
