RESTRICT Act: Patriot Act on Steroids

RESTRICT Act: Patriot Act on Steroids
By Nancy Thorner

Currently, Congress is debating S. 686, the RESTRICT Act, also known as “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act”. The stated purpose of the Restrict Act is to fast-track a Tik-Tok ban. Children and college age students are putting the Tik-Tok program on their cell phones.

While Tik-Tok has become the most popular app in the rest of the world, a domestic version called Douyin is available to Chinese consumers.

The apps are nearly identical but with one critical difference, users under 14 are required to use Douyin in healthy moderation on “teenage mode.”

On March 7, 2023, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee, led a group of 12 bipartisan Senators in introducing the RESTRICT Act in a campaign against Chinese-owned social media giant Tik-Tok.

Senator Manchin was joined by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), John Thune (R-SD), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Mitt Romney (R-UT).

The purpose of the act was to "address the ongoing threats posed by foreign technology products to American economic and national security." The legislation would also "establish a comprehensive, risk-based process through the Department of Commerce to evaluate and mitigate such foreign threats."

Although Tik-Tok is not explicitly used in the language of the bill, the legislation can be viewed as the opening shot in our government's effort to completely ban Tic-Tok, which is banned on government devices. The UK and Canada do ban Tik-Tok.

Tik-Tok warnings

As posted by Tyler Stone on March 30, 2023:

Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy gave this warning over the RESTRICT Act in his article, If Congress Expands Powers, It Must Rescind a Previously Granted Power.

“As opposed to as I am to the Chinese infiltration of our economy, I think we should be very careful not to become more like China in the process. Anytime you are going to have a new congressional statue that expands the scope of national security executive authority beyond what it was before, we have to take back some other scope of national security executive authority (specifically the Patriot Act), that was previously granted. Or else, we are just going to have an ever-expanding executive national security state.”

This excellent article posted on 3/31/2023 by J.D. Tuccille sets forth what the Restrict Act is all about: The Restrict Act Would Restrict A lot More Than Tik-Tok.

Excerpts follow

"We are troubled by growing demands in the United States for restrictions on Tik-Tok, a technology that many people have chosen to exchange information with others around the world," notes the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before taking such a drastic step, the government must come forward with specific evidence showing, at the very least, a real problem and a narrowly tailored solution.

'Narrowly tailored' would be deleting TikTok from sensitive government devices and otherwise leaving people alone to make their own choices. The RESTRICT Act isn't narrowly tailored at all. In fact, it's so broad it's difficult to see where its authoritarian powers end. Open-ended bills crafted to exploit popular panics make for terrible legislation."

And as reported by Jake Ruppert, Tucker Issues Dire Warning to Americans About Patriot Act For The Internet Watch here.

On his March 26 Monday evening show Tucker Carlson warned Americans about the RESTRICT Act. As Tucker said:

“The bill is ostensibly about protecting American national security and ending ‘foreign adversaries’ from interfering in our elections through apps like TikTok. Because of course, election interference from Twitter and Facebook is no problem at all, but election interference through Tik-Tok is totally unacceptable,” Carlson began.

“But in reality, if you are opposed to Tik-Tok, as we are, this bill isn’t really about banning TikTok, it’s never about what they say it is,” Tucker continued.

“Instead, this bill would give enormous and terrifying new powers to the federal government to punish American citizens and regulate how they communicate with one another.”

Carlson then went on to explain that the legislation would give the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Commerce, and not the elected Congress, the ability to decide who qualifies as a “foreign adversary.”

Tik-Tok as a security threat

In 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tik-Tok posed a national security risk. At that time Pompeo and other officials were mainly concerned with China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which says that Chinese companies must not only share data with the Chinese government if requested, but also maintain secrecy about it.

Passing a Tic-Tok ban

On the surface, the RESTRICT legislation might appear to be a noble piece of legislation. Many U.S. citizens would undoubtedly be concerned about sharing personal information with China and Russia, but the implications of this bill are far more reaching. It has been argued that enforcement through blanket bans is the wrong way to go.

The Guardian reported that the White House appears to be "very in favor" of the bill, and its progression to the House of Representatives and subsequently the President’s desk looks likely.

However, the idea of a national ban still faces huge hurdles, both legally and in the court of public opinion. Previous attempts to ban Tik-Tok under the Trump administration was blocked in court due in part to free speech concerns.

Tik-Tok also remains one of the fastest growing and most popular apps in the US and millions of its users are unlikely to want to give it up.

As reported by Catherine Thorbecke on Tuesday, March 21, 2013, Chew, the CEO of Tik-Tok, related the following in a TikTok video:

“Tik-Tok now has 150 million monthly active users in the United States.”

“That’s almost half the US coming to Tik-Tok to connect, to create, to share, to learn, or just to have some fun. The figure also includes about five million businesses that use TikTok to reach customers”.

RESTRICT Act proposals

The legislation proposes the following:

Codify and improve a set of rules that was created under the Trump Administration and expanded upon by the Biden Administration, whereby the Secretary of Commerce can review transactions involving information and communication technology products from adversarial nations.

Require the Secretary of Commerce to establish procedures to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit and mitigate transactions involving information and communications technology products in which any foreign adversary has any interest and poses undue or unacceptable risk to national security;

Prioritize evaluation of information communications and technology products used in critical infrastructure, integral to telecommunications products, or pertaining to a range of defined emerging, foundational, and disruptive technologies with serious national security implications;

Empower the Secretary to impose mitigation measures – up to and including banning certain products – to protect the national security of the United States from threats posed by foreign technology.

Educate the public and business community about the threat by requiring the Secretary of Commerce to coordinate with the Director of National Intelligence to provide declassified information on how transactions denied or otherwise mitigated posed undue or unacceptable risk.

Conclusion

Although children and young adults would not react kindly to having their Chinese Tik-Tok entertainment source banned, the RESTRICT Act, if passed, would go beyond the scope of the Patriot Act by giving enormous and terrifying new powers to the federal government to punish American citizens and regulate how they communicate with one another.

In actuality, it's an Orwellian Nightmare that would seize web domains and could possibly imprison Americans for 20 years if they contradict the regime in power.

The RESTRICT Act must be defeated. Contact your senators and U.S. House members to educate them about the deceptive and far-reaching RESTRICT Act.