A very important new bill is being circulated within the United States that will change the way how Americans use the internet and will probably affect other countries as well.
Earlier this month, a bill “S.686 Restrict Act” was proposed to allow the president to have further control over which tech companies can operate in North America.
This bill is being called the “TikTok Killer” because basically, they can now easily ban the new age social media giant because they are deemed as unsafe. One of the main reasons is privacy which is practically dead at this point and the NSA has a lot of say about that.
It is an illusion of privacy, that officials are betting on in order to probably ban TikTok. By selling to Americans that they are protecting them from the Chinese threat, could be a good sell in order to ban TikTok altogether whenever this new legislation passes.
Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok under his tenure and that never quite worked out, they tried to coerce the US arm of TikTok to convince ByteDance to sell but that didn’t work out either. Now this bill will tighten the noose around the social media giant.
Other parts of this bill state that, the federal government is basically going to keep an eye on companies operating in the United States that might pose a risk to the country.
“Specifically, the Department of Commerce must identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, and mitigate transactions involving ICT products and services (1) in which any foreign adversary has any interest, and (2) that pose an undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security or the safety of U.S. persons.
Additionally, Commerce must identify and refer to the President any covered holding (e.g., stock or security) that poses an undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security or the security and safety of U.S. persons.
If the President determines that the holding poses such a risk, the President may compel divestment of or otherwise mitigate the risk associated with the holding.
Commerce may (1) designate any foreign government or regime as a foreign adversary upon a determination that the foreign government or regime is engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to U.S. national security or the security and safety of U.S. persons, and (2) remove such a designation. Commerce must notify Congress before making or removing a designation; these actions are subject to congressional disapproval.”
The bill applies to technology connected to a “foreign adversary” of the U.S. Only six countries fall under this designation: China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.
The Act would give the government power to scrutinize just about any technology—from internet hosting services to satellite payloads to mobile apps—as long as they are used by more than 1 million people in the U.S.
This new bill is already prompting people, especially in the tech space to want to dig behind to find the real motives behind this bill. There was even a segment that states that you go to prison for up to a year minimum and be fined anywhere between $250 – $1000,000 if you use even a VPN to access these websites that are of “foreign adversaries” and deemed unsafe.
Let’s see how this plays out, if the bill does end up being passed we are in uncharted territories where the government will have tighter control over what they want us to see and hear.
Given that this now sounds like something straight from China’s playbook, it’s interesting to see how Washington is slowly morphing into the enemy they so despise.
