It’s insane how governments keep trying to ban encryption, even though large chunks of the economy depend on the ability to exchange encrypted data. The same with criminalizing VPNs, on which pretty much every internet-connected business depends.
They’re learning from China
The internet poses a threat to the status quo - my local library will never stock anything written by Emma Goldman or Noam Chomsky, but, thanks to the interent, this information is pretty much at my fingertips.
They don’t like that - it’s far too democratic for a status quo that wants to pretend it’s democratic while ensuring that we never understand the idea of democracy in any way that doesn’t keep them in power and in the money.
It’s so exhausting the constant fascist anti-privacy laws there are. You stop one, 5 more pop up in its place. Eventually some are going to pass from sheer exhaustion.
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This is why we need to add items to the Bill of Rights. We need to pass laws that explicitly prohibit such legislation.
I would love to see that. However that seems unlikely in the US as it is controlled by tech giants and the glowies
We fought for net neutrality for like a decade and a half and then Ajit Pai just killed it like a monarchy with supreme power and fucked off into retirement.
The RESTRICT Act…could also criminalize common practices like using a VPN or side-loading to install a prohibited app
Lol wut? They want to make it illegal for me to install software on my device?
These fuckijg Mellon head legislators should be jailed for suggesting such violations…
No, they want to make it illegal to install an illegal app.
It’s like saying: “Lol wut? They want to make it illegal to grow weed in my home?”
Now, I am NOT for this bill regardless, but that shouldn’t be your reason.
The first step is to make it illegal to sideload “illegal” apps. It’s the step that sounds reasonable that less informed people might agree with or at least not protest. The next step is to arbitrarily decide what makes an app illegal. By that point, it’s too late to protest the actual law.
It’s like the law in Florida making the punishment death for sexual assault on a child. That sounds fine until you realize that their legislature has announced their intent to make wearing clothes opposite your gender in public into sexual assault on a child.
Unilateral restrictive laws, without specific stipulations or conditions, even innocent sounding ones like this, are one bad actor away from being changed to a political weapon.
