If you still want LJ around, or not to have the government in your business

[missdiane]

You probably heard about the proposed "TikTok ban" but it's far more than that and if you like being on LJ at all, you might want to contact your representatives to let them know that you aren't in favor of the Senate's proposed Restrict Act S686 bill.

For example:

The bill to ban TikTok is absolutely terrifying. It gives the government the ability to go after anyone they deem as a national security risk at which point they can access everything from their computer to video games to their ring light.

This is a Patriot Act for the internet. pic.twitter.com/uYea49F1b1

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 28, 2023

Also, it would potentially impose a fine or imprisonment for using sites owned by a "foreign adversary" which the Russian Federation is on that list in the bill. You know, like livejournal.

Comments

[threecee]

Given the number of US owned corporations that use VPN for internal with their different locations,staff working from home, transactions with other US owned corporations, and with customers the wholesale outlawing of VPN will probably hit a roadblock fast. I'm not going to attract attention by bouncing my VPN off any non-US servers just in case.

This is a badly written bill that should be stopped although I'm sure Big Business will be more effective than voter's petitions. Money counts, people don't.

The "we can get all your information" stuff isn't new. They can tap your landline, pull your voice records from Alexa and voice operated smart appliances, and tap into your WiFi. They can track your location through your phone and see all your online postings (including this one.)

Since 9/11 the FBI and DHS have had the right under the Patriot Act to walk into any library and say "we are investigating a foreign national who may have had contact with missdiane. Give us missdiane's complete borrowing record: everything she has borrowed to read, listen to, or watch, whether in physical or digital format. No, we don't need a warrant, we just told you we have cause to believe she may be relevant to the investigation of someone we suspect of having a connection to a possible plot against the US."

Thee was also a gag order on libraries preventing them saying anything about Patriot Act record seizures. Library staff could not even say how many Patriot Act "requests" they had. That was a criminal act that carried prison time. May still be.

One library listserv I was on created a legal work around to the "you can't say it ever happened" by every member posting every week "No Patriot Act Requests this week." When a library stopped posting that, we knew they had been hit. Gradually some of the big urban libraries and major research universities stopped posting as they got requests. I never had to stop posting. Don't know what has happened since I retired.

I've sort of decided that the government already has access to everything I do at any time they want. The main protection is the amount of computer use and manpower it takes to track over 333 million people. I just keep my head down. It is why I stopped using LJ except for commenting on posts and am avoiding any political discussion on there. I also figure anti-Putin comments could get the LJ staff in trouble because you know Russia is already monitoring them.

[missdiane]

Oh it's 100% the Patriot Act for the internet. Also, while Democrats are being dingbats at buying into the MUST BE SAFE FROM CHINAAAA crap, Republicans are wanting to shut down TikTok and other places because that is where people are now trading information and organizing to stop them, especially now that Twitter is such crap.

I can't do much, but I did let my reps know that I'm displeased with their inaction to stop the push to curtail our freedom of speech. It's the very least that I can try to do.