China wins again
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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Found on Reddit of all places. In China VPNs are illegal, soon they can be here as well.
The politicians and VPN providers who are saying "No, VPN's will not be banned" are spouting the 2023 version of "No, we're not introducing Vaccine Passports" that we saw at the beginning of 2021.
There are financial vested interests who want VPN's (and the Darkweb) gone to protect their bottom lines and restrict copyrighted content and speech. Just like how the pharmaceutical industry operates, as we've seen in the last few years. "Banning TikTok" just provides a nice sounding selling point for the masses as "eradicating the virus" did.
Follow the money.
Cool tip: The RESTRICT act does not mention tiktok in any way. This is entirely a censorship bill.
Honestly, I'm a huge advocate of not only banning TikTok, but arresting it's CEO and charging it's staff with crimes. It is an enemy organization. It's a military intelligence operation conducted by a hostile power and should be treated as such.
The issue is that the RESTRICT Act has no need to exist simply because of that, and what it's primary purpose is to introduce full-scale military intelligence monitoring of us.
I'm not interested in banning TikTok to stop a military intelligence operation against the American people, to begin a military intelligence operation on the American people (except run from the Pentagon).
The RESTRICT act says absolutely nothing about VPNs & in no way criminalizes them.
It in no way criminalizes accessing a "banned app", and there would be absolutely no reason you would need a VPN to access a banned app anyway. Think about it. If tiktok is banned, all this means is that it gets booted from the Apple store and Google Play. Tiktok itself can just move its servers out of US jurisdiction and continue operating. The US, unlike China, does not possess a "great firewall" and has no capability to ban foreign websites. So Americans could keep using tiktok all they wanted without consequences, they'd just have to "side load" it onto their phones. Absolutely no part of this process requires a VPN.
If the law was interpreted to criminalize any part of the above, it would be ruled unconstitutional regardless. Listen. Virtual child porn was deemed constitutionally protected by the Supreme Court, ok? If you can't go to jail for loli hentai & virtual cp, you're not going to get busted for having tiktok on your phone.
I wonder how much of this huge surge against the RESTRICT act was fomented by CCP propaganda dollars before it caught on more widely.
RESTRICT does have some broad weasel language because it is drafted by people who came up as prosecutors, and prosecutors always want laws to be stupidly vague and overbroad since it makes it easier to prosecute people and gives them more discretionary power. I do think some of this language should be changed to make it more narrow and clear cut or else there is going to be a lot of fighting in the courts over interpretation.
However, the things being said about RESTRICT are just flatly wrong. Take it from someone who actually has the expertise to read statutes.
This post doesn't make that claim. At least according (IMO) a reasonable interpretation of this meme, the VPN would just be used to facilitate the crime, not be a criminal act in itself. I realize it's got two lines, which can be confusing and difficult to comprehend all at once, but it's definitely not making the claim that "using a VPN will be illegal" in and of itself.
what about the part that you can't make FOIA requests against whatever procedures they do in service of this act?
I thought this was about rampant spying, anyways, a la Patriot Act
Its da chicoms who support freedom gaiz!
As we saw with UK terror laws, something doesn't have to be explicitly written in law for it to apply to things that were not in the minds of those who wrote the law. Councils abused it to spy on citizens for things that were blatantly not terror related.