Editorial: The RESTRICT Act strips away Americans' rights to free speech, privacy, and access to alternative news sources.
Can we prevent this Orwellian legislation from becoming a reality? Or, will the Feds unchecked power create a dystopian future where U.S. citizens are subjected to censorship and surveillance?
Original art prompted by Sam Kephart using OneCopy.ai
U.S. Senate Bill 686 grants sweeping and irreversible power (it’s a tuna net for what the Patriot Act missed) to the Federal government to control information and communications, restrict free speech, and censor online services, while granting immunity from public oversight. Americans must act now to protect their rights.
The proposed Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or RESTRICT Act (aka U.S. Senate Bill 686) is a chilling creation right out of George Orwell’s1984.
It’s sponsored by U.S. Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) and co-sponsored by 24 others.
Principally drafted by a coterie of Deep State advisors, it’s being pitched as a mere TikTok ban, yet nowhere in the summary or text of the bill is TikTok even mentioned.
Don’t fall for the subterfuge - the RESTRICT Act is a Trojan Horse whose sweeping and irreversible legal language enables the Feds to dismantle the very foundations of America’s personal freedoms and civil liberties.
This pending legislation’s provisions are disturbing and intentionally broad, vague, and ambiguous. It even grants the Federal government immunity from public oversight (checkmate) by restricting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the enforcement of the bill. This Catch-22 clause is nauseatingly similar to China's "Great Firewall," which isolates its citizens from a significant portion of the World Wide Web.
Its definition of a “transaction” could arbitrarily stop or interfere with data acquisition, information transmission, software updates, and data hosting. The punishment for engaging in any disallowed transaction is severe. Individuals found to be in violation of the Act could face fines of up to $1 million and jail sentences of up to 20 years.
From seizing and accessing personal electronic devices like your smartphone or laptop computer to censoring online services, the RESTRICT Act grants the Federal government heretofore unquestioned and overriding power to control what information and communications any American can access.
So, what’s it REALLY about?
The hidden agenda here is to control “the narrative” and restrict our access to the truth; we cannot allow that to happen.
Obviously, we should be concerned about national security and take steps to protect the U.S. from foreign adversaries. However, protecting our free speech, our access to alternative news sources, and our right to seek the truth away from the official narrative is vital to our survival. Americans must be able to express opinions and share information without fear of reprisals, control, or censorship.
We need to urgently educate ourselves and others about the importance of protecting our rights to free speech and privacy. Some forward-looking conservatives and civil libertarians have already sounded an early alarm about the dangers of this pending RESTRICT Act, yet the Biden administration and this bill’s bi-partisan Senate co-sponsors are pushing ahead with it.
Why? Are they trying to protect American citizens… or are they just seeking more power to dominate and control what we see and do?
Will enough Americans wake up to the coming dystopian reality the RESTRICT Act creates that looms like a gleaming guillotine over our civil rights?
Read the RESTRICT Act! It's ill-conceived, elitist, and end-runs our inherent Constitutional protections.
Let Senators Warner and Thune (and other co-sponsors) know we won’t stand for this kind of permanently embedded government overreach.
Founder and Framer Benjamin Franklin famously warned: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Or, as I say, ”Those who fail to watch the pot will end up in it."
Sam Kephart is a Spearfish, SD-based marketing consultant and the Editor of VaxxFacts.info.