Suppose suggested legislation outlaws both murder and walking. How could you oppose it? Are you, a dedicated perambulator-peripatetic, also a murder-supporter?
Obviously, this would be an attempt to foist a package deal consisting of unrelated or mutually contradictory elements.
Consider a more true-to-life example.
In the Wall Street Journal, Philip Hamburger argues that a congressional bill targeting TikTok would do much more than counter Chinazi spying on Americans (“The TikTok Bill Is a Sneak Attack on Free Speech”).
If curbing or even outlawing TikTok were the sole focus, one could argue the merits of the legislation given what is known about the company’s collecting of data and its relationship with the Chinese government. There’s no free-speech protection of foreign espionage.
However, as Hamburger points out, the bill gives the federal government “sweeping power over communications” and could be used to stifle speech protected by the Constitution.
The proposed statute would allow the Department of Commerce to undertake open-ended mitigation of “undue or unacceptable” risk regarded as arising from use of communications technology in which any entity subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary “has any interest.”
This is very vague and very all-encompassing. The legislation thus confers power over domestic communication companies “that could be used to extort their cooperation in censorship.”
Attempts to resist such “mitigation” or censorship would risk administrative fines of $250,000, criminal penalties of $1 million, two decades in prison. For supporting freedom of speech?
Please walk away from this, Congress.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney / DALL-E2
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2 replies on “A Package Deal”
The presupposition that much good can be done by focussing on foreign-owned technology is mistaken.
In the case of a major communications system, even if all the hardware resided within America, all the software were written by Americans, and legal ownership were entirely in the hands of Americans, a foreign power such as the Chinese state would almost surely be able to tap into it.
If this bill or something like it passes, I expect it to be the nose of yet another camel, which the state will insist be allowed into the tent.
The “Restrict Act” would restrict US.
Maybe that was really the plan all along.