A Threat from Within: The RESTRICT Act

Congress is sneaking a Trojan Horse through the gates, and America is turning a blind eye. The Resisting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communication Technology (RESTRICT) Act, sponsored in a rare act of bipartisanship by Democrat Mark Warner and Republican John Thune, has garnered extensive support from both sides of the aisle and the Biden administration. Yet, RESTRICT is not quite the attractive prospect that government forces have been advertising. Beneath RESTRICT’s veneer of political palatability lies a different beast, one that threatens vast expansion of executive power and consequent encroachments upon American rights.

Proposed as part of Congress’s controversial efforts to ban TikTok, RESTRICT ostensibly provides means for the banning of the Chinese app, and other foreign platforms that pose a “security risk” to the United States. As currently defined, the enemies RESTRICT designates include China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela — nations that policy hawks might designate a modern-day “axis of evil” — but the act gives the executive branch leeway to designate more countries as adversarial. That provision aligns with the rest of RESTRICT, which allows the Secretary of Commerce to force divestment from companies that fall afoul of “national security interests”.

As delineated by the bill, RESTRICT permits the Secretary of Commerce, along with other agency heads and the President, to take whatever action necessary to disrupt entities that pose “an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States.” If RESTRICT implemented provisions for congressional oversight, this vague wording might prove more acceptable, but as it stands, no lawmaker will have a say in what the executive branch finds to be “an undue or unacceptable risk”.

The myriad powers RESTRICT provides to the executive branch ought to be concerning after the popular uproar surrounding the PATRIOT Act, which expanded federal surveillance after the 9/11 attacks. RESTRICT provides the government with a similar range of powers for the same purpose of defending national security, implicitly acknowledging that the information needed on foreign companies will be gathered by national surveillance. However, more than providing the government with the ability to surveil and punish foreign corporations, RESTRICT also encroaches upon the rights of individual Americans, with its provisions to punish anyone — including average citizens who access what officials ban with the bill’s powers.

Beneath RESTRICT’s attractive veneer of political palatability lies a different beast entirely, one that threatens vast expansion of executive power and consequent encroachments upon American rights.

As some worried pundits have noted, the wording of RESTRICT enables the government to penalize citizens who merely use VPNs to access banned sites with fines and even jail time. This possibility is an ominous reminder of the Chinese surveillance state, one of the very institutions that the bill aims to combat. In response, its authors state that the bill is not intended to punish citizens, but is a lack of malicious intention really enough? In Florida, Governor DeSantis has shown that officials are willing to twist the law to retaliate against corporations — in this case his attempts to wrest control of a longstanding special district from the “woke” Walt Disney Company. Should he or another similarly inclined politician gain the presidency in 2024, they would be entitled to fully use RESTRICT, including the broad powers that its authors promise not to use.

Even when confronted with the possibility of RESTRICT being used for harmful ends in the future, the Biden administration is jumping to endorse the bill, along with the cabinet officials who the bill empowers. No wonder, then, that current Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has already issued a glowing endorsement. Yet, considering the Biden administration’s promotion of data privacy, its wholehearted support of RESTRICT ought to be treated skeptically, especially when the bill’s provisions enable its use against American organizations and individuals, and deliberately create ambiguity on the bill’s powers.

That implication of vagueness is no accident: The RESTRICT Act’s dangers go beyond the powers it offers. Under Section 12 of the bill, acts taken by the President and executive officials under the auspices of RESTRICT can only be subject to review in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, an unusual provision likely to take plaintiffs far from their homes. Even more strangely, Section 15 of the bill renders transactions made under the bill immune from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applicability, only further disguising exercise of the bill.

Beyond more than just giving the American government more power to prey on its own citizens, RESTRICT reinforces a pattern of hawkish national security legislation that will only further serve to inflame international tensions. In the name of defending citizens at home, Congress has only placed them in harm’s way, while doing little to combat the real threat that platforms like TikTok pose: their infringement of American privacy rights. Armed with that information, Americans ought to exercise caution, and treat RESTRICT more like what it is: a disguised attempt to dismantle constitutional safeguards.

Jeffrey Tian ‘26 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jeffrey.t@wustl.edu.