IMO the RESTRICT act is the most batshit crazy thing the US came up with in the last years. Everything about it is horrible. It is an act of extreme protectionism and censorship under the guise of national security. China doesn’t jail people who use VPNs. Everything about the act is intentionally very broad, and open-ended to enable arbitrary crackdowns by the government. They are literally opening the way to imprisoning of people for a multi-decade timeframe for things even countries they accuse of being totalitarian don’t care about.
They are either preparing for ww3
or know the Dollar is finished
or both...
This is a War Time Act... its not just about eliminating competition or consolidating power, it gives the President (exec branch) unchallenged power to shutdown AND criminalize almost anything and without proper legal or judiciary review nor due process...
Back in the day if an app like Tiktok misbehaved and violated Googles Terms of Service then Google Play store can remove it... This is not whats happening here, TikTok broke no laws, violated no rules, and has certainly played by the same "rules based order" America keeps yapping about, but because its Chinese, it must be banned...
Recall companies that actually break the law dont even get banned, at most the Justice department file civil suit or criminal proceedings and have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that laws were broken...and even then the punishment is usually a fine or in porportion to the crime that the company or its officers were convicted in court etc
This is not whats happening here...Its "we dont like you so we have predetermined you are already guilty" even if you are actually innocent
They are not even pretending anymore... its straight up blanket authority to act like a king or dictator to ban whatever it wants for any reason or no reason at all and then round up and lock up anyone who dares to speak up or challenge them on it, not even North Korea gives 20 year prison sentences or million dollar fines for mere VPN use.
The spirit and symbol of America has died
RIP USA
1776 to 2023
(not even one single pluto orbit around the sun... tsk... tsk...)