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
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.
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.
That made me so mad. It was so openly botted and gaslit. Not a single human being was against it that wasn’t part of a megacorp monopoly. It was just objectively bad. Just shows we straight up do not have a democracy, our votes meant nothing despite being one of the most widespread campaigns against it. I remember it was even the front page of google search to vote against it. That’s how you know how bad it was.
He received over 300,000 letters expressing support for net neutrality, complete with names, emails, physical addresses, and often phone numbers, and he dismissed all of them as spam. He knowingly voted against the will of the people for the benefit of a handful of corporations.
The funny part is he started working for a venture capital firm (Searchlight) after he left office that invested heavily in various isps and telcos. It’s like American politicians invented the most advanced bribery system and no one even blinks an eye, this is just disgusting.
He received over 300,000 letters expressing support for net neutrality, complete with names, emails, physical addresses, and often phone numbers, and he dismissed all of them as spam. He knowingly voted against the will of the people for the benefit of a handful of corporations.
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
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Children are one of their two go-to reasons for encroaching on civil liberties. If “won’t somebody please think of the children?” doesn’t work then they wrap it up in “terrorism ™️” and ram it through.
Umm, this bill harms children.
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.
What should be your reason? Why is wanting the right to use whatever software I want not a good reason?
Software is not weed, it is not an automatic assault rifle, it is information. You could literally speak the binary encoding of the software aloud if you had enough time, and I’m pretty sure freedom of speech is a right everyone has.
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.
Forgive my ignorance, I am an idiot. I did think about that part.
Way late to this, but:
First: it doesn’t say “illegal”, it says “prohibited”. Could be (and probably is) talking about apps prohibited either by the device manufacturer or apps that are otherwise legal but copied from another device (i.e. loaded through a 3rd party app store)
Second: the use of the “illegal” app should be the illegal thing, not the side-loading of it on your device. In your analogy, growing any plants in your house at all would be the new restriction, on top of weed being illegal (for now)
I did my part. Thank you for posting and I encourage others to contact their representatives.
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.
Disgusting! These bills never seem to end, it’s insanity.
Sad truth is they only need to succeed once. We need to succeed every damn time.
I guess we’re all Margaret Thatcher now
Sheer dangerous idiocy. Don’t just moan about this. Act! EFF makes it easy at that link and it really does make a difference.
Seems horrible but I don’t know witch county’s congress we are talking about.
Well considering the EFF is based in the US, the second sentence of the article mentions the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union, and halfway through the page is a link to Tell Congress which links to a page to look up your representatives with your UNITED STATES Postal Service zip code, I’m gonna let you put on your thinking cap and figure this one out.
They said county not country
I don’t think there are any witches doing anything in a congress.
United states
Remote government employees and contractors are required to use a vpn to connect to their work network. Any tech savvy business is using vpns to secure their remote employees work.
I don’t know what greedy idiot came up with this bill or is lobbying for it but the only ones with vested interest in violating your privacy like this is maybe big tech and isps.
Law drafts not linked?
gReAtEsT cOuNtRy iN tHe wOrLd
lEadEr oF tHe fReE wOrLd
