The Technology blog and podcast

WWDC, my thoughts

Hello folks,

While the Apple Vis coverage of WWDC isn’t what is usual, they do link to the press and other information that might be of interest. This blog post WWDC 23 Keynote: Apple Unveils Platform Updates and Introduces Apple Vision Pro Headset and New Macs covers this by linking to Apple and other sources instead.

This post from AppleVis titled apple vision pro VoiceOver support links to a demo with Voice over and the new glasses.

Here’s the thing, while my room I held wasn’t the most popular on Clubhouse, that’s ok. The people who were in there did have the same concern as I did when we were listening to the event. Apple Vision may become a very interesting problem.

Picture someone deciding to drive, then decide to watch a game on their glasses. Maybe they’re walking instead. We’ve got a problem with stupid already where people don’t pay attention in these modes of daily life, but this theoretical scenario is possible.

I am not saying that people will in fact do this, but it crossed my mind. Maybe its an over reaction, but I’ve had close calls with drivers through the years.

Some of the other things were interesting, especially with messages. Having pictures of folks as part of the contact card can be done, bbut what they talked about could be interesting. I’m not much of a memogy person, and I hate emogies as they stand now, although I do use a few emogies but not all the time. But the idea is cool where memogies can be used as part of the card too.

This is going to get interesting, and we’ll see what happens during the IOS 17 betas and whether they actually decide to start fixing some of the long standing issues with Voice Over and other accessibility issues I’ve seen on AppleVis.

Keep in touch!

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Looking for VPN apps? IOS has tons!

On Saturday, June 3rd, TSB staff went to work on the IOS app store to determine how many apps could possibly be out there for VPN usage.

Unsurprisingly, there are several Super VPN apps listed.

blog pst

TSB staff also found numerous applications ran by an organization call Free Vpn.

web site

While we as individuals and businesses have the right to privacy, Free VPN was registered in 2012 and is over 10 years of age. Their registration data is private, point of contact is web form only and the copyright notice is 2021.

Also, TSB staff found multiple Chinese VPN apps, one English speaking app that claimed 100 percent privacy and yet another app that said VPPN (virtual double private network?)

Nord and Express VPN software was listed, but not near the top of the initial list where we would expect paid VPN software to be. Question, how the hell is one to make a rational decision with all of these choices and no clarity on what’s potentially a problem and what would be safe to use?

TSB staff didn’t get Android involved as our Android user was not available during room time under the JRN House.

Some of these names make the search quite interesting. Makes you want to go see if a site exists. Some of these have atleast a 4 star rating. I wonder who uses half of these applications and would be willing to talk to the JRN on their use? Accessibility? Ease of use? Potential issues?

I want to have fair reporting here at the JRN, so we want to put this out to see what people are using. No judgement here, just the facts and experiences.

For companies we recommend, visit the resources page and find the table for companies and services as these companies and services we have looked at.

If you download any of these apps, the JRN is not responsible for what happens. The JRN cannot test every app and vouch for its claims. There are way too many apps, one device, and that device must work.

Feel free to contact us with your experiences by email, imessage, the TSB list or any other contact info you have. Looking forward in your responses!

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Here we go again: More please to pay for nothing

I’m now going to add these to the musings category. This is quite interesting.

The following was sent through jaredrimer.net’s comment form. Mind you, the IP that apparently sent this is based in Germany, and the domain from the email address is an Indian company who probably has no idea that their domain was used in an apparent attack that wants to extract $3k in bitcoin.

Its too bad that I don’t have the money now isn’t it? My financial advisor would love me if I paid these guys.

Also, notice that they give you a web address which I will not link for obvious reasons. Visit the page at your own risk.

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Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by () on Saturday, May 20, 2023 at 00:27:43

Name: Aaron
phone: 0367 7824961
contact_method: both E-mail and phone
additional_bug_info: We have hacked your website jaredrimer.net and extracted your databases. This was due to the security holes you had in your your site/server which have gained us remote control of everything that was on the server.

Our team is mostly interested in customer, administrative, and employee information which we have extracted through your databases once we got remote control over the server. It still needs to be sorted out but it will be well-organized once finished. First, we will be going through the emails/sms information and contacting the recipient how you held in disregard about their information being exposed to a hacking group when you could have stopped it. This would be detrimental to your personal image with these relationships with these people. Lastly, now that we have information not only will we be monetizing off it with our methods but made public or sold to other people that will do whatever they wish with the information also after we are done.

Now you can put a stop to this by paying a $3000 fee (0.11 BTC) in bitcoin. You can find our address by visiting https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/39PHuTwgY5THshy9VJoUXWebDA5jCprPmP where you can copy and paste the address or scan the QR code. We will be notified of payment which we will then delete the information we have obtained, patch the hole in the site/server which we got in and remove you from any future targeting in the future. You have 72 hours in doing so after viewing this message or the series of steps will commence. You can obtain bitcoin through such services such as paxful.com or do a search on bing.com
comment_or_question: We have hacked your website jaredrimer.net and extracted your databases. This was due to the security holes you had in your your site/server which have gained us remote control of everything that was on the server.

Our team is mostly interested in customer, administrative, and employee information which we have extracted through your databases once we got remote control over the server. It still needs to be sorted out but it will be well-organized once finished. First, we will be going through the emails/sms information and contacting the recipient how you held in disregard about their information being exposed to a hacking group when you could have stopped it. This would be detrimental to your personal image with these relationships with these people. Lastly, now that we have information not only will we be monetizing off it with our methods but made public or sold to other people that will do whatever they wish with the information also after we are done.

Now you can put a stop to this by paying a $3000 fee (0.11 BTC) in bitcoin. You can find our address by visiting https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/39PHuTwgY5THshy9VJoUXWebDA5jCprPmP where you can copy and paste the address or scan the QR code. We will be notified of payment which we will then delete the information we have obtained, patch the hole in the site/server which we got in and remove you from any future targeting in the future. You have 72 hours in doing so after viewing this message or the series of steps will commence. You can obtain bitcoin through such services such as paxful.com or do a search on bing.com

HTTP_USER_AGENT: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 12_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/103.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Vivaldi/5.3.2679.68
REMOTE_ADDR: 45.88.97.43

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According to our friends at Abuse IP DB this IP was first reported in August of 2022. The last report was 12 minutes prior to my report which means its still being used. Its an IP based in Germany, and you can look that up itself.

I’m letting you guys see this because you may get an email just like this and a straight email at best. This is not the first time we’ve gotten strange emails like this, EMHS has several blog posts like the one I’m writing that show these.

I’m not afraid to share, and I know that my customer information is safe because it isn’t stored on my server.

Whatever they leak, if they supposedly leak, isn’t jaredrimer.net data that is tied to customers, but to registrations to the blog which may be spam, and it only has name and email if that.

As for other data, I have no control of it, although MENVI’s lists aren’t customers, and it only has name and email so that’s going to be OK. Let’s see.

They didn’t even tell me what hole they got in to so if I can fix it, that would be better. I bet its a scare tactic to get me to pay money to folk. It doesn’t work., I’ve seen this, and I bet the email address doesn’t exist for one and the phone number seems strange to me too.

Want to try again, guys?

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System limitations on passwords

I saw this interesting question on Mastodon.

Noel Romey: What system limitations exist that force a password rule to disallow passsords over 14 characters. Storage is cheap y’all. Security breeches are extremely more expensive.

I do know that some sites still allow our simple passwords that shouldn’t be used anymore.

blog post

It dawned on me that this person named above does have a question that I’m not even sure what the answer might be except limitations on programming.

What that might be, I don’t know. But I do know that there may be accounts here that I support that could possibly have larger character passwords than that. But why we still have limits of 8 characters and some other variation rules like the quoted toot is beyond me.

If anyone has any ideas, come on forward and let us know the wisdom! Sharing knowledge is power!

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We’ve been talking about posting photos, but what about this one?

Here’s something I saw on Mastodon today.

Trenton Matthews: Boosting Cyan (CyanMatter): @emilygorcenski Going off on a tangent here. I’ve been telling anyone who has ears that they shouldn’t post private pictures on Discord. Whether it’s posted to a server with just friends or in the DMs, Discord’s CDN is public, meaning anyone who can make a good guess can get access to those media files.

Does this mean that this CDN could in theory without knowing it share your secrets within those photos?

Apparently, Tesla had an issue where their car took video even though it was completely off. This apparently got to Musk who was apparently caught with his own car uplading to his servers. Nothing ever came of it, from what I gather, so what about this new revelation in the quoted section above?

It doesn’t matter if a car does it, or your CDN does it, I’ve never posted pictures online like that and I only have one picture.

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Someone gets owned, tells disabled person to go home or use hot spot to get work done

Its time for a musing. I’m not here to complain about how one uses social media, and usually I read and move along. This, however, caught my interest as a tech person, and nothing more.

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I normally don’t comment on things on social media, but this is a little much. As you’ll see, the issue is going to get itself resolved, and I’m not going to say that it was a mistake of the college or anyone else. That’s for them to decide and not for this blog.

Blocking domains without proper notification of policy violations is not going to go well with folks. Especially if you don’t even know there’s a policy to begin with and its allowed.

This can be for anywhere such as a college or even an employer at work. I believe that blocking should be told to the users, and should be done before it is to take place unless its against policy which you agreed to when signing up for the employer or college or even school of any type.

Here’s the first toot, mind you, there will be strong language and I’m not going to edit what they say.

Munchkinbear: wait, what the fuck, I come back to the colege, log onto the network to find they blocked trailhead.salesforce.com, login.salesforce.com and canvas.instructure.com. I call the help desk to file a ticket. Their response, we don’t care and aren’t gonna fix it, it’s not a college resource, if you want to do something from those websites go home or use a hotspot. and not ours. your not allowed to do courses unrelated to the college on this network anymore. What a crock of shit.

While I don’t blame this individual for posting on social media, I have seen too many of these types of things through the years. No, I don’t have any control of any social media, but this got me interested slightly on what was going on.

Posting later, they toot:

Munchkinbear: so connect to the VPN at home, and the sites mentioned previously work, because now the college firewall can’t distinguish the traffic because all it sees is the encrypted VPN tunnel. That doesn’t make what their doing morally right, nor does it mean I’m gonna stop screaming and crusading to get the stupid, unwritten policy they implimented without a single notification to students overturned, it just means I have a work around for now.

In the meantime, they send an email somewhere to file a formal complaint about the block with no knowledge to students or staff, and this is where someone got owned.

The toot says:

Munchkinbear: whoops! Someone is about to get owned.
From “ISNS, Lorain County Community College”

To “Popplestone, Shane”

Date 5/9/2023 1:15:46 PM
subject: re: blocking specific domains, a policy now? and treatment by help desk representatives.

Dear Shane,
Thanks for reaching out to ISNS with your concerns. Firstly, how you were treated by Michael at the help desk is most certainly not how you should have been treated and I’ll personally be speaking to that individual today.
As for blocking those salesforce.com and instructure.com domains being policy? This is incorrect and will be resolved immediately. We do not discourage students from taking courses and learning outside the college, and you being told to basically go home or use a hotspot to get your work done? Is also most certainly inappropriate.
These restrictions will be removed by the end of the day, and all staff involved in this behaviour will be disciplined.
Thank you for letting us know of this issue.
Sincerely,
John at ISNS

Now, I have had dealings with Shane, who is identified here, and people can say what they want about him. But this isn’t about him. He has a right to be mad, post if he wants to social media, and let people know about what is going on in case he has followers in the same boat at the same location.

By this toot, sounds like someone is going to get owned, as there didn’t seem to be any policy, the work is getting done on free time and probably not during class time, and nobody told anyone about the policy change.

I would highly suggest that if you are going to block a domain on your network, tell people about the policy change and give people time to read it. Otherwise, there’s going to be backlash like this. Whoops!

I did tell Shane, that regardless on what people think of what they do on social media, sending an email was the right thing to do. I personally wouldn’t have done it this way, but then again, social media isn’t my life. If I chose to write about it on my personal journal OK, but even then, it would be done afterword.

Shane did respond that a pinned post and his bio indicate that he’ll vent, and if people use social media for that, I’m OK with it. Just write the email, get it resolved, and that’s what he did. I know one thing, I wouldn’t have blocked domains without letting my people who use my network know, that’s for sure.

End of Muse

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Kim Komando says: PornHub has banned the entire state of Utah

According to a Kim Komando minute, Utah has put a law in place for porn sites to do age verification. The response is that Porn Hub decided to block the entire state of Utah from accessing the site.

Kim states, other states should enact similar legislation and Pornhub will follow suit.

Its not a bad thing, said Kim, to do age verification. While porn may be bad in certain situations, it might not be a bad thing from time to time, especially if you’re alone. However, there could be too much of it, especially when you’re young.

Find the Kim Komando minute for May 3rd, where Kim talks about this. I forget the company name who owns PornHub, but this company really should be ashamed of itself.

If I were running this site, I would want to comply. Especially since people can pay to access some portions of the site, while other portions are free.

If you’ve listened to this, what do you think? Is the parent company of PornHub acting in bad faith by bbanning an entire state because they don’t want to do something logical?

Sound off in the comments. Make it a great day!

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This is beyond repair … another school district targeted … children with special needs targeted as well

Hello everyone. I’ve about had enough with these types of breaches. This is coming from NBC news. I’m not blaming this on them, because they’re a news organization, so thank you NBC News for bringing this to the public’s attention. This article was written today.

I’ve written about children’s issues when it comes to technology quite a number of times through this blog and podcast.

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blockquote> State legislators will not wait to cover online privacy for children <a href=”TSB 67 How the braille challenge can lead to success and The Security Box, podcast 130: Congress and the government can’t fix Coppa?

Let’s not forget my favorite one that I wrote: Hey Criminals! Keep your hands off our kids and their data! way back in 2020. I had enough then and now I’ve really had enough!

These are several blog posts and podcasts that I’ve published and we’ve talked about.

One particular blog post deals with children’s apps and advertisers.

blog post

But now, actors find it very funny that they want to go ahead and get as much information on children who can’t even do anything about the problem.

The real question comes to this. Why are the schools collecting information including social security numbers? Does it help you do your job? I understand child’s name, parent’s name, address and contact info … but that should be it!

The files reviewed by NBC News include everything from relatively benign data like contact information to far more sensitive information including descriptions of students’ behavioral problems and teachers’ Social Security numbers.

I get the fact that for payment purposes, you night need the teacher’s SSN,, but it wouldn’t surprise me if student data of this sort is in here and we don’t know it.

…

It’s a stark reminder that schools often hold reams of sensitive information, and that such leaks often leave parents and administrators with little recourse once their information is released.

Why is this the case! I don’t ever remember this being this much of a problem when I went to school in the 80s and 90s.. I honestly feel sorry about this because I would’ve probably said something back then.

At least 122 public school districts in the U.S. have been hit with ransomware since 2021, Callow said, with more than half — 76 — resulting in the hackers leaking sensitive school and student data.

Its not the school’s fault that you decided to target them. But, it is their fault if you got in through a vulnerability although if you sent a Phishing lure and the person bit, than they need to learn what they did so it didn’t hapen again to the school. What an expensive proposition!

The identity protection is a start, but as stated, it absolutely doesn’t do anything besides help you fix it after the fact.

The article is titled Students’ psychological reports, abuse allegations leaked by ransomware hackers and I want this shared as widely as possible. This happened in Minnesota and affects tons of children who have no idea how to fix it, understand the repercussions of what the hell just happened, or what it will do with their life later if that is the case.

This is beyond repair and Congress and other legislative bodies have not done anything to curve the overall problem of companies including schools that collect way too much data that has nothing to do with teaching, paying for goods and services, sigining up for web hosting or anything else.

For example: a child signs up as an adult for phone service. Fine, run the background check by running the SSN. Once that process is done, ask management if it is necessary for that sensitive information to be kept.

We’ve covered way too many articles and I have even questioned my own business man why I need to collect something like a bank address and SSN. I don’t do that anymore! It isn’t even necessary!

This has really got a nerve with me and I don’t know how to solve it, but it needs to be looked in to. This … is beyond repair.

If anyone knows how we can solve this, let’s see how we can get in contact with the right people and let’s start a conversation.

Here is the boost from Brian Krebs.

BrianKrebs: Boosting Doug Levin (douglevin): NBC: Students’ psychological reports, abuse allegations leaked by ransomware hackers https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/students-psychological-reports-abuse-allegations-leaked-ransomware-hac-rcna79414 #edtech #databreach @brett via @kevincollier

The linked article is above.

Rant over.

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Voice Dream going subscription, current users not affected, prices being worked out

I’ve been seeing boosts from Apple Vis about this notice titled Voice Dream Reader for iOS is now 59.99$/year which needs to be sent around.

The initial person who posted this said the price was $59.99 a year.

In the discussion, the voice dream team indicate that they appreciate the feedback and even will perpose a monthly subscription model. They have made it clear that existing users will not need to go to the subscription model.

I understand both sides and have been monitoring the chatter I’ve seen coming across my desk here at the JRN. While I don’t offer a subscription for this blog, I do offer donation amounts on my donations page. When working with someone with it, I decided on $1, $5, $10 $20, $50 and $100 amounts to be directly paid to me one time. Paypal is also an option for recurring donations of any amount, and while it has been tested, only one user has used it.

I understand that money is tight, and for developing a program like Voice Dream, there are costs that go in to making sure the app is running including licensing fees that must be paid to the people who have the voices. They are not free to just put on your device because the programmer puts them there.

I am under the impression that they have to pay fees for each download, and if they come across this and I’m wrong, they can correct the record. I don’t believe that I know everything and that’s fine.

Most of the community expect paid products to be affordable and I understand that. Just take my dental bill for example to replace fillings from many years ago. $575 is a lot of money, and one was one price and one was another; based on type of filling. I’m not going to disclose the amounts, but I only disclosed the total.

$60 a year is not necessarily bad, although Password Manager Lastpass is $36 a year, which is $2 a month. So yes, I see why someone mentioned why it was a little high.

Hopefully we’ll learn more about the subscription model and it works out. We don’t want to see the app gone. That’s how I connect to Bookshare, as I have heard their app is aweful.

Hope everyone is doing well.

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T-Mobile, are you serious? Writing letters to get people to sign up?

Hello folks,

As I write this, its monday morning just shy of 11 am. This is important as I usually have someone who assists me each week and today is that day.

The person who will not be named asked me if I was a T-Mobile customer. Of course I’m not a T-Mobile customer. Those who know me know that I’m not.

The basic letter indicates that I can get 4 lines for $27 per line. The exact number was in the letter but I’m not giving that number publicly and have changed it on purpose.

The thing is, the company has my name and address. How the hell did they get it when I am not a customer of theirs?

I understand Time Warner mailing me now known as Comcast in some areas. I did some calling before I moved to my current location. I chose the company I chose and I could change if needed.

For those who don’t know, T-Mobile has had breaches 4 out of the last 5 years, or shall we say at least 4 breaches throughout the last 5 years or so.

T-Mobile search through the tech blog

Here is podcast 58 (151.5mb) and podcast 60 (124.5mb)

These are at least two TSB podcasts in which we’ve covered this company in audio form and the blog posts are within the T-Mobile searchable posts.

Other podcasts may be podcast 66 (148.3mb) and podcast 128 (127.5mb) just to add to injury.

If T-Mobile really wants me to be a customer, they better start explaining what they’ve learn with their 5 breaches or so, and how we’re going to be protected the best they can as protecting from future breaches is paramount now. Don’t writ me a letter, make it public through the press and news agencies like you did via the breaches. Make it clear how the company has learned and steps implemented that might help assist you from future issues. If you have another issue, what will you do about it?

Speaking of keeping data, podcast 111 (142.4mb) talks about how companies including T-Mobile keep data for long periods of time.

And if you really think I want to go to the company, maybe i aught to bring up podcast 83. This was braught up because we know that Sim-Swapping is a thing and someone was swapped all right.

Download pod 83 (155.91mb)

They’ve had more podcast coverage than even John Bernard has, and he’s a scammer where T-Mobile has made mistakes and very big ones.

If I were to write a letter as talking points for people to get out of their contracts, it might go something like this.

Hello,

I’ve got great concerns that T-Mobile has had some security issues. The latest one was at least 149 million former and current customers. If I were to use your company, (insert company name) what steps do you guys take to make sure that my information is as protected as possible?

I understand that there is no such thing as perfect security. Even the security experts say there is no such thing.

I’d like to find a way to get out of my contract from T-Mobile because of these concerns, so how can you help me?

Let me make one thing clear. I will never tell any customer that they should go with this company or that company. I don’t know what works in your part of the country or state if we live in the same state.

With that said, we’ve talked on multiple podcasts about T-Mobile and people have said they want to leave at the first opportunity.

While the letter was a solicitation to get me to sign up, I will not go with a company with a bad reputation on responding to data breaches.

They’re just the fact of life. We can’t stop them. Its what you do after that speaks volume.

Whatever customers do, please make the right choice. No company is going to be perfect, and I respect the choice you’ve had to make that is best for you.

I’m just surprised that a company with bad PR (public relations) would have the nerve to mail people to get them to sign up with them.

If it was your ordinary person, maybe, as they only get what is reported in the news. I however follow the tech press and have spoken about what has been done and formed my own opinions of what’s going on. I’ve left the discussion open for people so they can think about what I’ve written and also linked to other articles for them to review.

I’ve decided that I am not moving to T-Mobile at least until I see that they’ve cleaned up their act. The fact they haven’t had a breach in awhile that we know about is great, but 4 or 5 with the same period is not great either.

Please make the choice that is best for you.

Thanks for reading, listening and participating. Even though listenership is low, its about who enjoys the content, not the millions of people you expect for a small outfit like mine.

Make it a great day!

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Los Angeles Metro will be discontinuing partnership of Transit App as their official app

Hello folks,

Back in May 2020, I blogged a welcoming blog post I titled Los Angeles Metro gets rid of Go Metro as official app: endorses Transit App.

In this blog post, I talked about the fact that this was a great move for Metro, and that it saves Los Angeles Metro money.

Just recently, Transit App came up with a subscription service called Royal. Metro paid for all of us to have this service which give us future departure times, buses that are further away and their departure times, our own log if we want, and possibly others i’m missing.

Yesterday, I read the blog post Metro’s partnership with Transit reaches end of three-year agreement which was blogged on their blog on March 31.

In this blog post, I am discouraged that they want to build their own app, especially since Go Metro, the original app they touted was of no value and completely blew when it came to usage.

I want to be optimistic, so we’ll see what this new app can do. I think Metro is making a big mistake. I’ve been advocating for Metro’s removal of their app and to team up with someone who can already do this.

Transit app can do this as long as the data is shared openly, which it is. Move it and Transit App work similarly, and Move it does now get real time data from what I’ve seen in notations.

I’ve not used Move It in many years, but I have it just in case.

Metro thinks it gave a better trip experience? It does give a better experience. People know how to use the app, and for that, I’m sorry they want to build a new one.

I really hope that it is accessible, useful, has features people want and a design that is easy to follow.

I don’t like Move It as they have four bus stops for each of the stops and then you have to find the right bus. That’s how Metro’s former app worked. If they build an app like that again, I will publicly not recomend it. Transit app is so much better, gives two directions for the bus with a swipe down with voice over, and you get the info you want.

I’ll end by saying that we’ll be there during the time that this is going on, and I’ll see what I think once it comes out unless I’m asked to beta test.

We’ll keep the blog posted!

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I just love emails like this one

So, after being on the phone for a bit, trying to look to see what i want to blog.

Maybe this email can go in to the musings category as I don’t even think they looked at my site. I don’t have instagram.

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This message was sent from: https://personal.jaredrimer.net/contact.htm
————————- COMMENTS ————————-

Hi there,

We run an Instagram growth service, which increases your number of followers both safely and practically.

• – Guaranteed: We guarantee to gain you 400-1200+ followers per month.
• – Real, human followers: People follow you because they are interested in your business or niche.

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• – Safe: All actions are made manually. We do not use any bots.

The price is just $60 (USD) per month, and we can start immediately.

If you are interested, and would like to see some of our previous work, let me know and we can discuss further.

Kind Regards,
Megan

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Have you visited my web site and where on it does it show an instagram account? Its probably a bot filling out something and giving out something that probably isn’t true. I’m not going to pay $60 for something I don’t have. Even if I did, how could I verify they were real humans like you say? How fun.

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A very interesting musing thought piece

I’ve been dealing with tech stuff today, so the blog hasn’t been a priority.

I saw this musing piece through a boost. I wonder what people think of this?

Devin Prater: Boosting Earthshine (earthshine): I have not been seeing nearly enough discussion about what is poised to be one of the most dangerous bills to move through congress this decade.

For those not in the know, Senate Bill 686 The RESTRICT Act in its current form grants sweeping authority for the U.S. government to prosecute, fine, and imprison any person whom–among *many* other things–uses a VPN to access any “app” operated by a “foreign adversary” of the U.S.

The wording of the bill is so broad and vague that it can criminalize a wide range of technologies, and potentially even ensnaring U.S. citizens for conspiracy simply on the basis that they use a VPN that the US gov. can’t snoop on and see what they’re doing with it.

Let that sink in–you could face a minimum of 20 years in prison and from $250,000 up to $1,000,000 in fines, just for protecting your online privacy with a VPN, and your only recourse is to appeal in the D.C. circuit court.

The bill’s sponsors pinky promise it won’t be used for that, and it’s only meant to catch foreign actors engaged in subterfuge etc, but the language to back that claim just isn’t there. The anti-circumvention penalties and restrictions essentially put at risk anyone whom engages in any activity using these technologies due to the fact that if the technology is working, then the government can’t see what you’re using it for, and therefore simply using it could be used as the basis for charges of conspiracy to circumvent.

It is abundantly clear that if this passes, it can and will eventually be used to target anyone engaging in activities the government or its corporate sponsors don’t like.

This isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a lubed up vertical waterslide straight to weaponizing the acting regime’s list of potential “threats” against citizens engaging in protected speech.

Don’t just write your representatives. Call them. Demand that they oppose this bill, and vow to actively campaign for their opponents if they won’t.

If this passes, then ultimately no speech is protected in the U.S. It is 100% unconstitutional, but do you really trust our current courts stacked with political operatives to shoot it down?

Read the bill and see related info here:

link to Congress’s site for the bill

Go here to find your representatives and how to contact them about it:

rep finder

Here’s more reading on the bill and how it affects us:

link 1 from Reason
link 2 from Vice
daily dot link 3 for jail time on VPN use
link 4 for a discussion

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I’m leaving the emotes in, but they’ve been removed for reading purposes for the show. Might be worth musing about.

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