The RESTRICT act aims to tackle TikTok. But it’s overly-broad and has major privacy and free speech implications.

Senator Mark Warner’s Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (“RESTRICT”) Act is currently in Senate procedure, as is widely thought to be targeting China‘s TikTok in particular.

However, those who bothered to read the text of the proposed act – which will next be considered by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, are warning that it is not merely about TikTok, but aims to grant wide powers over all forms of domestic and foreign communications to the government – such as enforcing “any” mitigating measure to deal with risks to national security.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

And, observers critical of these legislative activities note, there would be no due process in taking these measures, and not much in terms of safeguards.

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Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

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