RESTRICT Act raises questions, free speech concerns

How about the weather we’ve had the past few days, huh? I personally am loving the higher, summer-like temperatures.

Hope you all had a joyful Easter. Here’s one positive story I came across. In 2020, 3-yearold Luke Flerlage started helping out with Alleluia Baskets, a Christian charity that provides Easter baskets for kids in shelters or in tough situations where they would not otherwise receive a gift for Easter. The program also provides baskets to senior citizens.

Last year, the Flerlage family collected several cars full of Easter basket supplies, but this year Luke set his sights bigger. He told everyone he met that he was collecting things for Alleluia Baskets to “make kids smile on Easter.” He and his community filled a box truck with 12,221 items for Easter baskets. In all, Alleluia Baskets was able to give out more than 10,000 baskets this year. What a way to spread joy and love. -In national news, one bill before Congress currently is the RESTRICT (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology) Act. While being billed as a ban on TikTok, it is a lot more complicated than that. But before getting into the nitty-gritty of the bill, here’s a brief description of TikTok if you’re not familiar with the app.

Put simply, TikTok is a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. The videos can be on any topic and are typically between 15 seconds and a minute long. Popular videos include lip syncs, dances or comedy. One video rolls right into the next one in the scrolling feed format, which encourages the user to keep watching. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, evidently a private company headquartered in Beijing, China. However, “private” Chinese companies are legally required to turn over any information to the Chinese government upon request. So, there have been many concerns that China is using TikTok to spy on millions of Americans, particularly minors, since Generation Z teenagers are the American demographic most likely to use TikTok.

TikTok poses significant security risks, not the least of which is the fact that its in-app browser tracks every character typed by users. Characters tracked could include passwords for bank accounts, credit card numbers or other personal information — anything being typed into a field online. United States lawmakers are understandably concerned about that.

But anyway, getting back to the RESTRICT Act — the bill mentions neither TikTok nor its parent company, ByteDance, by name. However, it would give the executive branch of the federal government the authority to block “transactions” and “holdings” of “foreign adversaries” that involve “information and communication technology” and create “undue or unacceptable risk” to national security.

The RESTRICT Act also gives the federal government the authority to shut down any app or website that “poses an undue or unacceptable risk of … interfering in, or altering the reported result of a Federal election.” No matter what you think about the last presidential election results, it’s fair to say that the language is pretty broad and could be stretched pretty far.

As it’s written, the RESTRICT Act presents serious free speech concerns as it gives over a lot of control to the federal government. The act, at least in my understanding of it, could make it easier for the federal government to ban information sources it simply doesn’t like, whether or not they pose a security threat. It’s the whole “Give the government an inch and it’ll take a mile” argument. Once you give the government more power, it never gives it back. Although the aim of preventing the Chinese government from spying on Americans is not bad in and of itself, the slippery slope argument comes into play pretty quickly here and how far the act’s language could be stretched.

Also, on the individual level, if a person is concerned about the security risks of TikTok, as they should be, they can choose not to use it. They still have that agency.

Another problematic part of the bill is it contains language that would seem to criminalize the use of VPNs, or virtual private networks. A VPN sends a user’s internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel that nobody can see into. It also shields the user’s IP address, the number that identifies the user’s device and their location in the world. So, you could be using the internet in central Wisconsin but the VPN would make you appear to be in Japan or Germany, or some other random location other than your actual location.

Sections of the bill refer to services “designed or intended to evade or circumvent the application of this Act” as being covered under the act, which could include VPNs. There are fines as high as $1 million or prison sentences as long as 20 years if users reach networks in nations such as China and Russia. According to Warner Communications Director Rachel Cohen, the punishments in the RESTRICT Act “would not be used against ordinary citizens.” She said that the bill was “aimed squarely at companies like Kaspersky, Huawei, and TikTok that create systemic risks to the United States’ national security — not at individual users.” Somehow that answer is not satisfactory to me, however, and I suspect also not satisfactory to the many Americans who use a VPN.

One solution could be a bill with more specificity. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Angus King (I-Maine) have introduced the ANTISOCIAL CCP Act (or “Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party”), which specifically grants the commanderin- chief the power to block all transactions necessary to prevent U.S. operations of social media platforms headquartered in a “country of concern” or “foreign adversary.” The bill explicitly identifies China as such a country and ByteDance/TikTok as such a social media platform. So while not only aimed at TikTok, it has a much narrower purview than the RESTRICT Act. In this case, the more specific, the better. It could be a step in the right direction.

Many more security concerns will no doubt continue to crop up as we continue to navigate this digital world in which personal information is one of our most precious commodities.

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