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The US Legislature seems to have drafted a bill which can only be described as pure evil.

The purpose of the bill seems to be to harm both the interests of United States middle class, by restricting competition at the international level, and to also give the executive branch unrivaled power to meddle in the market of free speech. Under the RESTRICT Act, hosting a website for a Chinese national could land you a 20 year prison sentence and $250k fine. The bill also goes to great lengths to remove ordinary avenues of democratic and judicial review. The RESTRICT Act specifically disables the people's right to use the Freedom of Information Act in order to obtain information about the execution of the law, and alters and reduces the normal judicial review safeguards that protect free speech.

There is no such thing as information adverse to the interests of the United States. There is only information adverse to the currently elected government of the United States. We must question why such measures exist, against the backstop of the knowledge that political powers tend to seek to prevent information adverse to their interests reaching swing voters that might depose them of their positions. It is a well established fact that Joe Biden's administration has conspired to threaten the removal of section 230 immunity for the purpose of coercion of censorship of social media platforms. A fact that Reclaim has been documenting extensively. Joe Biden and the other Progatzi wish to control control and censor social media to fit their narrative. That this is happening amidst a leftward swing in electoral politics towards socialism in the United States raises serious questions about whether or not the motives for such censorship are based on genuine concerns about national security, (like, preventing the U.S. from being bombed, which is genuinely a matter of national security concern) or whether "national security" is merely code for the entrenched interests of the capitalist elite. If "national security" means favoring pro-capitalist propaganda and censoring socialist propaganda, this is the exact sort of meddling in the marketplace of ideas that the First Amendment was meant to guard against. The First Amendment is supposed to facilitate change-of-regime by allowing the people to peacefully debate and argue the merits and demerits of various schemes of government. Something that the Capitalist Elite of Washington seem intent in meddling with.

Regardless of other factors, Tik-Tok cannot seriously be considered a threat to national security. One must merely look at the absurdity with a sober mind of calling the social media platform a "threat to national security". All of the possible scenarios that would make Tik-Tok a threat to the security of the United States apply equally to Google and Facebook. But we cannot allow the government to control social media, because social media serves as a tool of the people to control the government. Reversing this, where the government controls social media, would invert the power structure such that the United States could not fairly be called a democracy.

That is not to say that China is a democracy. In China, the government controls social media, and as such, the basis for democracy is thusly rendered ineffective as the people are stripped of the tools to restrain the government. But China's own anti-democratic leanings do not justify the abandonment of our own belief in free speech, our belief that the people, through social media, newspapers, books, blog posts, and other editorials share information with these tools and thus through the ballot box, control the government. Our society is based on a belief that the legitimacy of the government arises from the consent of the governed. But I would argue that it is the "informed consent of the governed" which truly establishes the legitimacy of a government. There is thusly no democracy without the freedom to share ideas.

This act serves and important purpose in the arsenal of the evil fascists who support it, namely, the act provides a tool with which any company may be arbitrarily bullied by the executive branch. The secretary of commerce gains the power to disrupt the competition landscape and funnel resources into American companies, benefiting the American Elite campaign donors, at the expense of the American working and middle class that benefits from robust international competition lowering prices. The recent protectionism has resulted in the American Elite getting richer while the middle and working class are harmed by increasing prices directly caused by protectionism. COVID was merely a cover for the protectionist measures. Donald Trump and Joe Biden's China Trade War, as well as Joe Biden's excessive treasury bond issuance, are directly responsible for increased inflation which squeezes the middle class and working class.

There are alternative ways that we can protect the national security of the United States against spying and foreign interference, but this measure which grants censorship power to a single individual cannot be the correct answer. A more carefully reasoned approach, with extensive judicial review, as well as open and transparent review of government action through FOIA and other mechanism, are more appropriate to issues dealing with sensitive freedom of speech questions. The government should carry an extraordinary burden before meddling with social media, lest the power be abused to manipulate the marketplace of ideas. We have already seen abuse unfold by the coercion and threat of legal action, absent actual action, through chilling effects.

We can argue the merits of trade war with China and Russia, but our freedom of speech should not be collateral damage of the desire of the currently in power Elite to convince the American public to vote for them. Such would be a betrayal of the principle of democracy. The Elite must accept that they have no right to win elections, that China has a voice to be heard by the American people, and that the People at the ballot box, not the Elite in the Legislature, CIA, or State Department, decide what is in America's best interests. If the American People do not accept the Elite's propaganda, then the Elite must lose the elections. Should the Elite continue down the path of censorship in the name of their objectives, they will, if successful, reach the pinnacle of evil once reserved for the Nazis and Soviet Union.

If any representative does happen upon this journal post, I am of course willing to provide helpful pointers regarding alternative avenues that would protect legitimate national security interests without the collateral damage to the basic Freedom of Speech upon which our concept of government is founded upon.

The GDPR would almost certainly be held unconstitutional in the United States. Only an insane jurist could consider it constitutional under the U.S. legal framework established in Reed v. Gilbert and related cases.

There is not a distinction between "Bob cannot collect Alice's phone number" and "Alice cannot share her phone number with Bob". These two statements are equivalent logically. The second, an information sharing restriction, is a clear violation of Alice's rights to speech. While the government could restrict non-consensual data collection, restricting consensual data collection is a direct violation of the right to share information enshrined in the First Amendment. Moreover, the government can usually only enact information sharing restrictions when a "compelling government interest" justifies it. While the government can sometimes enact privacy regulations where a compelling governmental interest exists, such as in medical records, even then, patient consent allows the medical records to be shared. HIPA itself straddles the boundary of constitutionality, it would be ridiculous to think such onerous information sharing restrictions could be upheld against rudimentary information like a person's name, particularly considering the "least restrictive means possible" and "not unduly burdensome" standards that govern First Amendment jurisprudence in the United States.

Likewise, cookie restrictions would clearly be unconstitutional, since the website doesn't store cookies on your computer. Rather, the website transmits cookie information as part of the response, and the web browser has the option of saving the cookie or not, and retransmitting the information or not. In fact, some browsers, like Mozilla Firefox, allowed you to get a pop up for each cookie a website offered, with the choice to accept, deny, accept all cookies from the website, or deny all cookies from the website. Most users did find this inconvenient, and opted to simply allow all cookies to ensure site functionality.

Restricting the sending of cookies is a content-based speech restriction, and restricting the saving of retransmission of cookies is likewise a content based speech restriction. Unless a website owner takes active measure to deny access to custom web browsers, the fact most web browsers will save cookies without asking is irrelevant to this analysis. The user choses to use a given web browser, and if the cookie is stored non-consensually, the blame for this must be on the web browser, which stores the cookies, not the website, which merely transmits it to the web browser. Restricting the transmission of cookies is a core First Amendment violation.

The Supreme Court must recognize that regulations which target the content of TCP or UDP packets are content based speech restrictions. Computers can respond differently to the same packets based upon their programming. The "content-neutral" restrictions can be imposed on the quantity of data, or forbidding ISPs from discriminating based on content.

IP (Internet Protocol) routes packets of data over the internet. This is the carrier medium. It's like a letter. Each computer could respond differently to this data. TCP and UDP (And UDPlite etc.) just deliver messages to applications according to the programming of the computers on the network.

Regulations on what information or messages applications must place into the packets is inherently a content based speech restriction that must be subject to strict scrutiny without exception.

If a web browser sends a request to my computer via HTTP, which is listening via netcat, I can manually type out a response which the requesting computer will receive and display as a web page. Automating that function on the server side should not strip me of first amendment protections for the content I write.

Laws like Texas's social media law do exactly that. We must establish strict scrutiny as the standard for regulations on packet data.

Suspicions arise that government agencies may be adding fingerprint data to cameras.

This information may be being used to stop right to repair as well as identify what phones take which pictures. Hidden information including serial numbers may be stored in low order bits. It may also be encrypted.

Could rich tax avoidance problems be solved with a Loan Tax?

It'd work like this, say you borrow $15,000. A loan tax would be applied based on your income plus loans, say 25% witholdings. The loan servicer would withhold $6,250 in taxes. This $15k loan would be treated like income for that year and taxed accordingly.

Next year, say you made $60k in income, but pay back the $15,000 loan. The loan repayment would be subtracted from your income, so you'd only pay taxes on $45k.

This prevents the rich from taking out loans to avoid taxes and is more fair to those who take out loans to cover living expenses, as they'd get taxed based on the year's income they needed the money, not the year they could afford to pay it back.