.SenJohnThune spoke out after the RESTRICT Act received critical attention the past week from civil liberties groups and many conservative commentators, who argue the bill would overextend government authority and infringe civil liberties.
Sen. John Thune spoke out on Friday after Senate Bill 686, also known as the RESTRICT Act, received critical attention the past week from civil liberties groups and many conservative commentators, who argue the bill would overextend government authority and infringe civil liberties.Perhaps most notably, Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Thune and his co-sponsor, Sen. Mark Warner , of"introducing flat-out totalitarianism" through the bill.
"There's been a lot of misinformation about this overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation — a misinformation campaign that seems to be more rooted in fear of our growing momentum than it is in the actual substance of the bill," Thune said in a statement sent to the Washington Examiner. Critics say that the bill resembles the PATRIOT Act, a law passed after the 9/11 attacks that provided law enforcement with additional tools for tracking terrorists over commerce, technology, and communication.
Critics also say that virtual private networks, commonly known as VPNs, could fall under the bill's strictures if a user were to access banned apps by accessing the internet in a different country. Warner's team rebutted the allegations and said that the laws only apply to the companies, not the users.
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