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**Would The Feds Ban Twitter Under The RESTRICT Act?**

Would The Feds Ban Twitter Under The RESTRICT Act?

_Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClear Wire (https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2023/04/28/would_the_feds_ban_twitter_under_the_restrict_act_896437.html),_

**Decoupling from Communist China** in every strategically significant realm, from the capital markets to defense and pharmaceutical production, and information and communications technology **is imperative** if we are to counter its hegemonic ambitions and persist as a free and independent nation in something more than name.

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Banning TikTok – a ubiquitous social media platform that masquerades as a proliferator of harmless dance videos while doubling as a likely tool of Chinese Communist Party surveillance and data harvesting (https://www.heritage.org/technology/report/tiktok-generation-ccp-official-every-pocket), and certain tool of its information warfare, under de facto if not de jure CCP control (https://www.scribd.com/document/633015202/TikTok-ByteDance-And-Their-Ties-to-the-Chinese-Communist-Party) via Beijing-based parent ByteDance – would logically be part of any such decoupling, and manifestly in the U.S. national interest.

But **arguably the most prominent congressional effort putatively aimed at achieving a ban of TikTok, the bipartisan RESTRICT Act, raises concerns that the cure may be worse than the disease – to the extent it even ameliorates it (https://twitter.com/FinancialCmte/status/1640409547532652544?s=20).**

If past is prologue, key language in the bill hiding in plain sight would seem to legitimize the very heretofore lawless targeting of domestic dissent under which Americans have suffered in recent years – undermining the values and principles the bills’ supporters purport (https://twitter.com/MarkWarner/status/1641170109455814656?s=20) to cherish.

Under the bill, one could easily see the likes of a Twitter, or any other platform or service out of favor with authorities nuked, or at minimum under existential threat.

**The RESTRICT Act broadly authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to “review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries.”**

Among other provisions, it calls on the Secretary to “take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate” any of a number of “undue or unacceptable” national security risks arising from a slew of transactions past or present, including “any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and communications technology product or service” to which entities tied to China or several other countries, or subject to their jurisdiction, have an interest.

The leading co-sponsors of the RESTRICT Act, Virginia Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, and South Dakota Senator John Thune, a Republican, frame (https://archive.ph/7MgFd) it as “a holistic, rules-based” effort “narrowly tailored to foreign-adversary companies” that is “more likely to withstand judicial scrutiny” than other proposed bills for combatting TikTok – bills that arose in part because the courts stymied President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban the application using existing executive authorities.

**Some critics (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/31/senate-tiktok-bill-restrict-act-00089926), including China hawks, contend that despite the broad authority the bill grants the Commerce Secretary, it may not ultimately lead to a TikTok ban**. The bill does not explicitly call for the banning of the application. Nor does it mention it, or any other application, by name – rather listing broad categories of software and hardware that could be probed under the bill, linked to several foreign foes, including among them China.

Others liken (https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-ban-tiktok-slammed-patriot-act-digital-age?intcmp=tw_fnc) the legislation to the Patriot Act, just for the digital age. This is not meant to be a compliment. They argue that the RESTRICT Act threatens civil liberties – namely free speech – in the name of security by granting the government sweeping powers to crush communication platforms under the guise of ill-defined risks with extensive criminal penalties (https://reason.com/2023/03/29/could-the-restrict-act-criminalize-the-use-of-vpns/). The vaguer the language (https://reason.com/2023/03/29/could-the-restrict-act-criminalize-the-use-of-vpns/), more pervasive the powers, and fewer the checks and balances (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text#idb2a77edcaddb4dd582459974d92f7c08), such critics surmise, the riper the opportunity for government to overreach.

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