In our last podcast, we talked a lot about
Tennessee legislative stuff whole bunch of stuff that's been going on and we have been extremely busy
With that for the last several days. It's very tiring and exhausting and so we're not gonna talk about that in this podcast
We're gonna talk about federal legislation
Welcome back to the T-Rex talk podcast the official podcast of T-Rex arms where we equip serious citizens and today
We're gonna be talking about the Restrict Act, which is a federal bill that adds a lot of control
to the United States government
It gives them the authority to control a lot of the internet and we're gonna talk about this bill not so much
Because of specific legislative action that we want you to take
But just so that you can be better informed about stuff that is going on and make some better decisions be better equipped for
Stuff that's gonna happen in the future just being ready for various changes that are happening and
I think that a lot of us probably need to make some changes to the way that we use apps devices and the internet
Which makes the Restrict Act a great topic because it says that we need more control over our apps devices and data on the internet
I believe there's also a very important
Comprehension conversation to be had the way that rhetoric works around bills like this is extremely important
So we're gonna be talking about false dichotomies false premises the presuppositions that people demand that you discuss a particular bill or issue inside of
That's that's kind of an important topic to get to but let's let's talk about the Restrict Act very quickly
This here is one of those bills that has a fancy acronym name restrict stands for
Restricting the emergence of security threats that risk information and communications technology
Which is a super dumb thing to call your bill unless you wanted it to spell
Restrict which it does so way to go and the Restrict Act is
Very interesting in many different ways one of the things interesting about it is that it doesn't actually add a whole lot
Of wiretapping or mass surveillance capability to the United States government and I think that's because the Patriot Act
Already does this the Patriot Act already allows for massive massive amounts of mass
surveillance on the American populace and others, but it certainly allows it on the American citizenry
But the Patriot Act has been around for a very long time over 20 years and over 20 years the internet and
Communications technology has changed quite a bit. So I think that the Restrict Act is basically
Patriot Act 2.0 or maybe it is a plug-in for the Patriot Act
to basically bring things up to speed and give the government the kind of control that now exists on
Communications technology if you go back to
The year
2001 when there was the attack on the World Trade Center Twin Towers
And obviously there were a whole bunch of reactions to that specific event a whole bunch of different things happened as a result
And one of them was the passage of the Patriot Act so that we could have
Greater
Surveillance capability over people who might do that sort of thing and then there were also some specific crimes that were created and
A new class of criminal who was a terrorist who gets a new legal status
There's a lot of stuff in the Patriot Act
But the mass surveillance thing is one of the more important pieces even though the terrorist
Category gets used a lot occasionally
situations happen like on January 6th and people suddenly become terrorists and they have a completely different set of legal rights
So I don't want to sweep that under the rug
but the mass surveillance part of the Patriot Act is
The thing that gets used the most often and it is the thing that I think really needs to get addressed
but as I said a lot of things have happened since the year
2000 and one of those is that
Information technology has become a lot more centralized and there's a lot more top-down control if you think about Windows 10 or Windows 11
I guess we're up to Windows 11 now
Microsoft has a lot more insight into the users of Windows 11 and a lot more control over the Windows 11 operating system
Then they did Windows 2000 and mobile devices like Android phones and iPhones have a tremendously
large top-down control mechanism for each one of those
different
ecosystems of device
So the ability to control the apps that are on somebody's phone or the data that is on somebody's phone
Not just eavesdrop on their transmitted information
but actually control the ones and zeros on their phone that has increased tremendously and
The government really would like to have more control over those things too
That really is what the Restrict Act appears to be all about
Now the way that this is being pitched to the American people since there hasn't been a
9-11 style attack recently is
Something much worse no not January 6th, but the TikTok app
The Chinese TikTok app represents a tremendously large threat to the American populace
According to a lot of people and so the Restrict Act
A lot of the talking points around the Restrict Act are specifically focused on
TikTok but interestingly the Restrict Act
Doesn't ban TikTok if the TikTok app itself were such a existential threat to the United States
You think that they would mention it, but it doesn't do that. It just gives the United States
specifically the Justice Department
and the Secretary of Commerce
The ability to control all sorts of foreign entities and all sorts of apps
All sorts of information technologies
Now come under the direct oversight and control of the Commerce Department somehow
This is after all the best way to control the TikTok app
And it's really important that we control the TikTok app because it can be used for
mass surveillance of American people which threatens the national security of the United States
So now that you know a little bit about the Restrict Act and what it does and kind of how it does it
Actually to be honest it doesn't really explain how it's going to do these things
It does give this power to the Secretary of Commerce
But there isn't really an explanation of the mechanisms that will be put into place to do this
Specific job and there doesn't appear to be a lot of judicial oversight
There really isn't any transparency on how this is going to work
So it's kind of a mysterious bill and it's very broad and it's very vague
So it allows just all kinds of stuff to happen
And that's generally a bad idea allowing the United States government or any government
To do whatever they want is a really bad idea
And interestingly the supporters of the Restrict Act degree
And that's why TikTok is bad and we need the Restrict Act to control TikTok
And this is where our conversation about false dichotomies and false premises
Begins because there's a huge amount of fewer on the internet as people discuss this issue
There's a bunch of people who like TikTok
Either they enjoy using it to consume media or they're very successful at producing media on TikTok that has
Made them successful famous wealthy whatever
And they don't like this idea and then there's a bunch of people on the other side who would like to get rid of TikTok
I myself
Not a fan of TikTok
And we have decided on the internet that there are only two sides to this argument
You must either be pro TikTok or you must be pro
Restrict Act
There is no other way that you can look at this particular issue
There are no nuances and there are no moral absolutes that you can judge these things
You must choose either one side or the other
You must either be on the side of
Senator Mark Warner who would like the United States government to have almost unlimited power on the internet
Or you are a Chinese shill
You support the communist party of red china and you would like them to have almost total control
Of the internet those are the only two sides you must pick one
And oppose the other you cannot possibly oppose both
And you probably see the problem with this particular line of arguing it would be very easy for you to say
That
For the same reasons we don't want the Chinese government spying on american citizens and having a lot of control over the information gathered by
Their phones
We also don't want the united states government to have a whole lot of control and insight into the activities of american
Citizens and control over all the data that they have on their phones
If it is in fact dangerous for the Chinese government to have this level of control
It could also be dangerous for the american government to have that exact same or perhaps more control
But most internet arguments don't really involve a lot of logical arguments
They generally involve arguing within a very set
Set of parameters a set of presuppositions that frame the argument and you are supposed to play inside of those rules and those rules only
This happens a lot and i'm just on the internet but in real life as well in the 1930s
There was a great argument i say great because it was large and powerful not because it was excellent
There was this great argument raging in europe over national socialism versus international socialism
The intelligentsia of europe was very clear that you had to pick one of these two opposing viewpoints
No alternatives could be adopted because if you were opposed to international socialism in the soviet union
Then that proved that you were a friend of national socialism
Uh in italy in germany
The intelligentsia of europe were hampered by their great intelligence and their great learning had kind of driven the mad
And so they were they were pretty convinced that socialism was the future
And so you had to pick one of these two flavors of socialism in order to be
One of the bright young things of europe the mez
You know the intelligentsia of europe a lot of people fell into this particular argument
They could see that there were problems with one of the two flavors of socialism
And so obviously they wanted to be opposed to it and on the other side and a really good example of this would be
Um one family in particular the mitford sisters
They were I don't even know exactly how to describe them. I'm not sure that we have anything comparable
to them today. We have cardashians and
I guess that the cardashians are kind of similar in that they're a very public glamorous family that the audience
Uh really adores, but the mitford sisters were extremely intelligent
Writers and they were very sharp and clever and people assumed that they had a lot of wisdom
They grew up in this very aristocratic set of highly admired people
And they split right down the middle as a family
Nazism on one side and soviet socialism on the other side
They swallowed socialism hook line and sinker and then they argued over the two sides of that coin
And I would point out that this family was not merely dabbling in these ideas like they were fairly heavily involved in these particular
movements in fact
One of the sisters who was more closely associated with fascism actually is rumored to have had an affair with adal fitler
I don't think that's actually true
But she certainly did tried to commit suicide with a pistol that adal fitler personally gave her
And uh, yeah, so they were pretty close to the thought leaders on each of these two camps
And today 80 or 90 years later people are still using this false dichotomy between
communists and fascists as a talking point a political talking point that forces people either further to the right or to the left
By claiming that international socialism and national socialism two flavors of the same totalitarianism
authoritarianism top-down control system are
Opposite ends of the political spectrum and that you must fully adopt one side in order to completely repudiate the other
And the conversation about the restrict act is exactly the same
totalitarianism is
Apparently a given you must choose this day which totalitarianism you will serve either the totalitarianism of the u.s
department under the
I guess supervision of the justice department or you must pick the
authoritarianism of the communist party of red china there is no middle ground
There are no other options. You must choose one flavor of totalitarianism today
And while I'm sure that there are people out there who are making this false premise very carefully and very deliberately
Because this is how they want the argument to be framed. There's also a lot of people who I think are making this false premise
Um argument because they have completely swallowed the false premise
They believe that totalitarianism is the only way forwards that it is inevitable
And so yeah, you just you just need to pick a flavor
But it's far better to oppose this false premise than to really completely engage with it if the premise is indeed false
Then you got to point that out and
The tricky part is figuring out who exactly you are dealing with for the people who are using it
Manipulatively on purpose and they know that it's a false premise you can do so very bluntly and very harshly
But when you're interacting with people who have uh, you know taken the bait and seen a other alternative and genuinely believed that this
Is the only argument that we can possibly have and no other data exists
You need to do so more
Gently and winsomely and that can be really difficult. It's usually more difficult to determine
Which of the two you're actually speaking with
And this is part of the reason that internet arguments are a bad place for this. There's no context
There's no nuance. There's no way to actually figure out the tone of the people you're interacting with
It's much better to do this in person face-to-face and
With not too many people at a time
That's part of the reason that a lot of the conversations that happened down to the Nashville capital recently about gun control
We're not super fruitful. There were large mobs of people shouting and screaming and waving signs and
Generally stating a false premise the premise
Uh, I'm sure you've heard it before it goes like this
If you care about children in schools, then you will ban guns
If you believe that guns are a superior way to protect children in schools, then you actually hate children
You either want to protect guns or you want to protect children
There is no option where you protect children with guns. In fact, the main thing that the protesters were shouting about in Nashville
Um
They were demanding uncontrolled. Yes, but they were actually protesting the passage of a bill that would have put more armed
In schools where children are threatened
This is why it's really important to have these sort of conversations before the mob forms
It's really really hard to reason with the mob
So let's get back to the restrict act
If we cannot swallow this premise that we're going to have totalitarianism no matter what and we just pick whether we have the version that speaks
Mandarin or the version that speaks
Inside the beltway dc english, where do we actually start and unfortunately one good place to start is by admitting that the restrict act is
Kind of right
We actually do need more control over our devices and our apps and our data
There is a huge amount of mass surveillance going on. There are a lot of bad actors that want to do nefarious things by controlling information
This is a very true statement
The problem is that the government well, this is not their job
Defense of your digital data just like the defense of your personal life
Is more your responsibility than the united states governments
And we the people in the united states have really handed off a huge amount of that authority and control to
So far not the government but
Large providers of various services like google and facebook and apple and atnt and verizon and so forth
We have really depended on these folks to defend us from bad actors and to take care of our data for us
And up until now they have primarily only been sharing that data with the united states government
And the british government and the various other members of the five eyes and we've been
Basically, okay with that level of total spying
But now that the united states government would like a little bit more control
We've decided that we're not okay with chinese spying. This is the kind of dichotomy that we should be discussing
And we should really be talking about how to fix that overall problem and we should point out some various other things like for example
If the american government is actually concerned about all of our data being stolen by the chinese
Then the best thing that they could possibly do is stop collecting it themselves
I think the biggest
Data breach that we have had so far that we know that the chinese government was involved in was
When a huge amount of the office of personal management's data got stolen
The office of personal management is a very large government department that stores all of the data related to
Employees of the united states government, which includes not only bureaucrats
but also
Members of the armed forces and spies if you remember in the mission impossible movies
Maybe it's only the first one. I think that uh tom cruises always trying to protect the names of the american spies
Well, the office of personal management has not only the names of the spies
But the names of their families because their families have to be interviewed when they get security clearances and all of those interviews and all of the surrounding
Context information just a huge amount of data related to our spies
And our special forces guys and our military leaders and basically everybody that has a security clearance whether it's top secret or lower
All of that stuff was stolen by the chinese government in sometime in the summer of 2015
This is a perfect example of why the united states government is not the best person to solve this problem and
Massive massive surveillance and top-down control mechanisms that they control
Are not going to be the best way to protect the american citizenry from other groups that like top-down control and wiretapping
There's a huge number of pragmatic arguments that we could make about the need for
decentralized privacy controls where we have a better idea of what's happening on our own phones and storing our own data
Then putting it all in the cloud, but there's also a principled argument and that's where I would like to end things
We actually do have a standard here in the united states by which our government is supposed to be limited or
Restricted if you will and that is the constitution and the bill of rights
And when you look at the restrict that you can see that it actually does a whole bunch of different things
That the bill of rights prohibits
Now because it is so broad and because it is so vague
We have to do a little bit of guessing as to how it's actually going to be implemented
And there's been a lot of fear on the internet as well for example one of the things
That the restrict act says is uh, well, it introduces a whole bunch of new crimes
You can be guilty of some new crimes
They're created just like the ones that were created in the patreon act
And there are some punishments for these crimes if you try to circumvent the various controls of the restrict act
You can be punished by a variety of punishments including large fines in prison time of up to 20 years
And a bunch of people have looked at this and said well
Hey, if you use a vpn when you're in a different geographic area
This potentially gets you 20 years in prison and then a bunch of people on the internet said no, absolutely not
That's preposterous
In fact, there was so much argumentation about this that mark wardeners office
Or spokespeople from his office actually commented on this but they did not say
That this wasn't true. They merely said that these penalties were not intended to affect regular american citizens
And that wouldn't be misused in this way
Which uh is probably the loudest confirmation that this could be misused to focus on and target american civilians
That I have ever heard
But let's go back to the bill of rights for a moment because there's been a lot of conversation over the last few years about the first amendment
The first amendment is your right to free speech and in the last several years
We have seen a lot of censorship of that free speech on private platforms
Which is
I agree not directly subject to the bill of rights if you have a private business you can control speech
on the platforms of that private business because the
Bill of rights is meant to restrict the government and not individuals
The problem is that a lot of the censorship of that speech on those private platforms was at the behest of the government or intelligence agencies
Or individual government agents and as more of the twitter files are released by elon musk
You see more and more examples of this
So those government agents are violating the first amendment even though twitter isn't necessarily bound by it
But with the restrict act they would actually take direct control over some of these platforms
And some of the applications installed by these platforms there would be no more asking
There would just be direct actual control and since one of the things that the restrict act is supposed to combat is
People quote undermining the democratic process
Uh, yeah, they would definitely be handling misinformation using censorship
Another thing that we have seen talked about quite a bit in the last few years is
an attack on
Encryption the technology of encryption is something that is under direct assault from a few different people because
Strong crypto makes it really hard for government
Surveillance to work and that's why a lot of government officials have requested that we actually ban strong encryption and that every
Encryption product that is on the market have a backdoor
That they can get into kind of like the locks that the tsa demands that you put on your luggage
Locks that only they can open but you know the tsa keys were leaked very quickly
And so it is real easy to get tsa keys
And then you can open all the tsa approved locks which means that you can open basically all the locks on all the luggage
Backdoors don't stay secret for long enough for them to be nearly as effective as people think or
Maybe too effective depending on your perspective
And so there's been a lot of conversation in the past about strong crypto being military grade
Being weapons of war and the second amendment says i'm allowed to have those things so
We don't want the restrict act to uh take away our encryption options
The third amendment is something we don't talk about very much because it refers to the quartering of troops in homes
Which is something that the british crown did in the colonies
They put red coats in people's homes and that was a major problem
And so it's important enough to be amendment number three
But we don't really talk about that as much anymore
because the government doesn't station troops in people's homes, but
If you have a lexa in your house
um
And the government controls a lexa
It
Comes pretty close to a third amendment violation in my opinion
Now the fourth amendment is really the important one the fourth amendment
Is the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects
Against unreasonable searches and seizures
And I feel like this fourth amendment is one of the most trodden on of all of the others
I believe that the patriot act allows for a lot of unreasonable searches mass surveillance is
An unreasonable search, but the control act would actually allow for for seizures
When your data is actually being surveilled and intercepted
Uh, you still actually have it other people steal it. It is no longer secure
But you still actually have those things
The seizures come along when you have the restrict act and the government is actually given control over
Certain online platforms and app stores they can remotely remove data from your phone
They can remotely remove applications that they have decided are too dangerous
Because a foreign government is using them for
Uh, I don't know some kind of mass surveillance
How dare they or because the encryption is too good like signal or because it has an impact on the country's critical infrastructure and digital economy
Because it's mining crypto or because it's interfering in federal elections because it's a platform that would be allows the sharing of trump memes
Or it undermines the democratic process of other policy or regulatory decisions like I don't know
Another place that has dank memes seen a lot of people complaining about discord actually
There was a young man in the air force who had been sharing a few top secret documents with a few people on a discord server
And uh, he was arrested because it would have been much better. I guess if he had I don't know
Put him in his garage next to his Corvette because I hear that's okay
But uh a lot of the criticism that I've read online is not just toward him directly the leaker
But uh towards the platform itself
Discord is a platform where people share dark memes
This is a place where conversations happen between people with unacceptable political beliefs
And sometimes data is leaked on it. Now the entire platform is actually suspect
Even though I have pointed out in the past that discord has actually done as fair share of banning people for things that they don't like at the behest of the government on
I don't know january 7th for example
And then we come to the fifth amendment
The fifth amendment is a little bit complicated. It has to do with legal due process
But one of the points there is that people shall not be compelled to be witnesses against themselves in criminal cases
And if you have a bill like the restrict act
That creates new crimes that you can only commit
By being opposed to the restrict act and you can only be convicted of by data that you yourself create
That is accessed by people with the power of the restrict act
I think that that is kind of encroaching on that fifth amendment there
You are compiling the data that will be used against you
You kind of have no choice but to be a witness against yourself in some of these
Potential upcoming criminal cases
It also says that you shall not have your private property taken for public use without just compensation and
A lot of us
Are having our private personal phones being used for public data gathering already?
Restrict act is just going to push that into high gear
So again, I feel like
We're breaking the fifth amendment with this thing
And
I believe that if you were a lawyer and you looked at it carefully you could probably find ways where the restrict act breaks
Almost all the amendments in the bill of rights
Any act that pitches a perfect no-hitter like that is probably something that should not be put into law
It's probably not something that we the people would like to see
Our elected officials handing over to our bureaucrats
This is not a tool that is going to help us as a nation be more secure against the chinese government
This is not a tool that extends the liberty and freedom of the american people
And the good news is I think a lot of folks actually know that there are people on the right and on the left who see
The this thing is a pretty overpowered bill that is extremely as I said before broad and extremely
vague and it has a huge amount of power attached that a lot of people don't want on
Several different fronts for several different reasons. So I have no idea what actually is going to happen with this bill
I have no clue what the odds are of it passing
But nevertheless, it's worth talking about because it is something that is being discussed both well
And poorly by different people on the internet and it is worth pointing out that most of the conversation
That is being conducted poorly
Is a conversation around a false dichotomy a conversation that happens inside of a false premise a conversation that is limited by
presuppositions that just are not true and
Revolve around this idea that totalitarianism is inevitable and good long as you get the right flavor
So whether you're talking about gun control or information control or any other type of government control
Make sure that you're talking about the real key root issues and try to figure out who you're talking to and the best way to have this
conversation about the fundamental truths
Behind the rhetoric
Remember that ideas have consequences and it's the standards that we hold ourselves to that matter
Thank you for listening to this t-rex talk
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