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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
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Riana Pfefferkorn, researcher scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, told Motherboard in an email “This bill certainly is troubling in that it would grant a great amount of power to the executive branch. That should be unsettling in any context: recent examples around the world, from Israel to China, are showing us the risks that arise from upsetting checks and balances to favor executive power.”“It absolutely does implicate those free speech rights for Congress to give the President the power to take ‘appropriate’ action—up to and including banning—against a particular ICTS in the name of national security or Americans’ security and safety. (Even if you trust Joe Biden with this power, would you trust Donald Trump — who tried to ban TikTok as well as WeChat while in office — with it?),” she added.The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act is led by Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD). The pair introduced the bill earlier this month, which is deliberately not limited to just TikTok.Do you know anything else about the RESTRICT Act? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
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