Open letter to Supporters of the RESTRICT Act
Earned Trust Cannot be Replaced with Draconian Controls.
Threats to National Security
Real threats do not come from outside our own country. Partisan divisions, political Fear-mongering, and Economic and financial mismanagement, to name a few, carry the seeds of our destruction.
This act purports to allow the Department of Commerce to review, block, and mitigate transactions involving foreign information and communications technology (ICT) that pose undue risk.
The Department of Commerce has yet to earn that Trust. Most of the US government has been caught up in partisan bickering and fear-mongering instead of the business of improving life for the people of the United States. There is so much that is broken in the US that could be fixed with effective government intervention, yet again, for whatever reason (clearly not national security), a small group of ill-informed individuals driven by fear chose to enforce control over building Trust.
Earn our Trust and gratitude by fixing what is broken instead of overarching controls. It does not work; it never has. Take a hard look a the abuse of money in government. Lobbying, corruption, and income inequality would be an excellent place to start.
The RESTRICT Act shows a profound lack of understanding of technology and how the citizens of the USA use it. I am 70 years old, and with my knowledge of technology, it is clear to me that anyone supporting this overreach is either ignorant or evil and should not be in any position of the government.
The US Spring
Overreaching on internet controls turned the Arab Spring from a localized political protest into a full-blown regional revolution sweeping civil war across the region resulting in 61,000 deaths. Imagine what could happen in a politically stratified USA; instead, I would encourage you to focus on pragmatic changes that positively impact US citizens rather than this ill-fated cluster f*&/k.
I do not, as a rule, get politically active. For entertainment purposes, I have tolerated the political clown car. This is different; I have no desire to live under a communist China-style government, which is the precise direction this legislation points to.