It seems that Congress is worried about China spying on American citizens – particularly via the vastly popular TikTok – so they’re moving to pass the RESTRICT Act (“Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” or Senate Bill 686), which would “authorize the Secretary of Commerce (which is not an elected position) to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes.”

Pretty broad, eh?

Critics are (rightfully) calling it the Patriot Act for the Digital Age. FYI, the Patriot Act was enacted after 9/11/2001 to ‘protect’ Americans, but it was basically a ploy to grant the federal government wide-reaching surveillance powers to spy on US citizens and not long afterwards, enter the Age of Social, which made it oh, so much easier for the government to spy – and censor. And even propagandize.

In case you’re wondering why critics of the act are concerned, note that, according to the Act, “Should a US-based person or company violate a restriction issued under the RESTRICT Act, they would be subject to civil penalties of up to $250,000 (or twice the value of the transaction that served as the basis of the order, whichever is greater) and criminal penalties of up to $1 million in fines and up to 20 years imprisonment.”

But wait! There’s more! Noted Yahoo!Life, “Eric Goldman, law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute, told Insider the goal of the RESTRICT Act is to allow the government to veto software that allows people to talk to each other and poses a major threat to Americans’ First Amendment rights.”

So, the government, which has, to date, not addressed tech anti-trust or censorship issues, will now be granted the power to determine which software will be allowed to enter the market. It seems that we’re devolving from a free-market economy to a surveillance/censorship economy, or did we miss something?

The bill has strong bipartisan support, and as Goldman noted, “”It’s rare to see such bipartisan support for anything nowadays. So the fact that both parties are lining up, you know, chomping at the bit to outdo each other with their sinophobia — it’s not a good sign for free speech. Basically, we’ve seen both parties say censorship is preferred here, and that puts all of us at much greater risk.”

It’s interesting that as the tech cabal has been hoovering up all our personal information all these years, yet we’ve long been told that it was in the name of targeted marketing. So, that wasn’t true???

Talk about bipartisan support, or worse, it gets better: Google CEO says AI will impact ‘every product of every company,’ calls for regulations, MSN reported. “Pichai added that without guidelines, AI could be abused by bad actors. The technology could be used to quickly create deepfake videos to spread disinformation and could “cause a lot of harm” at a societal scale.”

Again, correct us if we’ve missed something, but when was the last time Big Tech, with their powerful Washington lobbies fighting tooth and nail for years against being regulated, request regulation?

“Google has released its own recommendations on how to regulate AI…Last month, a group of tech leaders including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Tesla CEO Elon Musk penned a letter calling on companies to pause AI development, citing “risks to society.””

Show of hands:

Who believes AI development is going to stop or even slow down any time soon? Or that calling to restrict AI, or the RESTRICT Act itself, is about our protection. It seems that our rights and even our very freedoms are at stake here, especially in light of the fact that re the RESTRICT ACT, the decisions will fall into the hands of political appointments and bureaucrats.

And given that we live in an era of deep fakes, hackers and digital twins, this is all especially dangerous.  (I Cloned Myself With AI. She Fooled My Bank and My Family.)

We’ve allowed tech to run roughshod over us for far too long, with little or no pushback, and it seems that tech is no longer the only ones who want to get in on the game – in the name of tech and safety, of course. But this would be way beyond the pale. We’re reminded at this juncture of a song entitled “You’ve Gotta Stand for Something (or You’ll Fall for Anything).” In this case this is way too far to fall as we go onward and forward.