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Re:TikTok Ban Bill Is Patriot Act 2.0 Trojan Horse by gruez on Thursday March 30, 2023 @12:30AM (#35367996)
That seems like an overly broad interpretation. How is this different from standard laws like "you can't aid or abet someone committing fraud"? You can plausibly argue that you can use VPNs to commit fraud, therefore any sort of law that says you can't "aid, abet, counsel [...]" is a ban on VPNs.

edit: standard laws against aiding/abetting. Should we be concerned about those as well? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2

Re:TikTok Ban Bill Is Patriot Act 2.0 Trojan Horse by dqv on Thursday March 30, 2023 @01:28AM (#35368441)
It's different because it's way more nebulous:

>(G) No person may fail or refuse to comply with any reporting or recordkeeping requirement of this Act, or any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued thereunder.

You can plausibly use a VPN to commit fraud, but there isn't a "Fraud Investigation Secretary" who can arbitrarily decide how/what/when records need to be kept. The investigation for someone committing fraud on the VPN wouldn't give the "Fraud Investigation Secretary" the right to see any and all records that the VPN service has when a smaller subset of records specific to the instance of fraud would suffice. Oh and the "Fraud Investigation Secretary" can determine that this entire process can be handled secretly because it's classified. Oh and you're not allowed to ask the government through a FOIA request how it determined the fraud was committed through the VPN.

I reject the notion that the government wouldn't use this law as a dragnet. The Patriot Act remains expired after all.

And remember kids, the next time that somebody tells you "the government wouldn't do that"-- oh yes they would

Re:TikTok Ban Bill Is Patriot Act 2.0 Trojan Horse by amatecha on Thursday March 30, 2023 @03:48PM (#35377924)
This guy has been commenting all throughout the discussion showing he doesn't understand the text and hasn't actually read it.