USA, Restrict Act: VPN in the United States could get you 20 years or a fine up to $1.000.000

source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text?s=1&r=25

(c) Criminal penalties.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.

SEC. 5. Considerations.

(a) Priority information and communications technology areas.—In carrying out sections 3 and 4, the Secretary shall prioritize evaluation of—

(1) information and communications technology products or services used by a party to a covered transaction in a sector designated as critical infrastructure in Policy Directive 21 (February 12, 2013; relating to critical infrastructure security and resilience);

(2) software, hardware, or any other product or service integral to telecommunications products and services, including—

(A) wireless local area networks;

(B) mobile networks;

(C) satellite payloads;

(D) satellite operations and control;

(E) cable access points;

(F) wireline access points;

(G) core networking systems;

(H) long-, short-, and back-haul networks; or

(I) edge computer platforms;

(3) any software, hardware, or any other product or service integral to data hosting or computing service that uses, processes, or retains, or is expected to use, process, or retain, sensitive personal data with respect to greater than 1,000,000 persons in the United States at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered transaction is referred to the Secretary for review or the Secretary initiates review of the covered transaction, including—

(A) internet hosting services;

(B) cloud-based or distributed computing and data storage;

(C) machine learning, predictive analytics, and data science products and services, including those involving the provision of services to assist a party utilize, manage, or maintain open-source software;

(D) managed services; and

(E) content delivery services;

(4) internet- or network-enabled sensors, webcams, end-point surveillance or monitoring devices, modems and home networking devices if greater than 1,000,000 units have been sold to persons in the United States at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered transaction is referred to the Secretary for review or the Secretary initiates review of the covered transaction;

(5) unmanned vehicles, including drones and other aerials systems, autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles, or any other product or service integral to the provision, maintenance, or management of such products or services;

(6) software designed or used primarily for connecting with and communicating via the internet that is in use by greater than 1,000,000 persons in the United States at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered transaction is referred to the Secretary for review or the Secretary initiates review of the covered transaction, including—

(A) desktop applications;

(B) mobile applications;

(C) gaming applications;

(D) payment applications; or

(E) web-based applications; or

(7) information and communications technology products and services integral to—

(A) artificial intelligence and machine learning;

(B) quantum key distribution;

(C) quantum communications;

(D) quantum computing;

(E) post-quantum cryptography;

(F) autonomous systems;

(G) advanced robotics;

(H) biotechnology;

(I) synthetic biology;

(J) computational biology; and

(K) e-commerce technology and services, including any electronic techniques for accomplishing business transactions, online retail, internet-enabled logistics, internet-enabled payment technology, and online marketplaces.

(b) Considerations relating to undue and unacceptable risks.—In determining whether a covered transaction poses an undue or unacceptable risk under section 3(a) or 4(a), the Secretary—

(1) shall, as the Secretary determines appropriate and in consultation with appropriate agency heads, consider, where available—

(A) any removal or exclusion order issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense, or the Director of National Intelligence pursuant to recommendations of the Federal Acquisition Security Council pursuant to section 1323 of title 41, United States Code;

(B) any order or license revocation issued by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to a transacting party, or any consent decree imposed by the Federal Trade Commission with respect to a transacting party;

(C) any relevant provision of the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation and the Federal Acquisition Regulation, and the respective supplements to those regulations;

(D) any actual or potential threats to the execution of a national critical function identified by the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency;

(E) the nature, degree, and likelihood of consequence to the public and private sectors of the United States that would occur if vulnerabilities of the information and communications technologies services supply chain were to be exploited; and

(F) any other source of information that the Secretary determines appropriate; and

(2) may consider, where available, any relevant threat assessment or report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence completed or conducted at the request of the Secretary.

Not sure what the point of this topic is??

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  • The OP also failed to post the part of the proposed legislation that describes the proposed activity to be deemed illegal.
  • :spiral_notepad: Had the OP read that section, the crimes relate to doing things to stop: "the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes."

IN GENERAL.—It shall be unlawful for a person to violate, attempt to violate, conspire to violate, or cause a violation of any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under this Act, including any of the unlawful acts described in paragraph (2).

:point_right: Subsection (a) begins here

I'm no political expert bill reader :blush:

Afaict if you use a VPN to access something the government restricts you are in some real trouble.

The RESTRICT Act is not limited to just TikTok. It gives the government authority over all forms of communication domestic or abroad and grants powers to “enforce any mitigation measure to address any risk” to national security now and in any “potential future transaction”

sources:

https://twitter.com/LPMisesCaucus/status/1641195362143846400

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641227053575053312

:open_mouth: You run a VPN servers or sell hardware devices that serve more than 1,000,000+ U.S. users!?!?

Is it running OpenWrt???

This proposed legislation say nothing about what you're describing. Can you explain why you think this law is restricting VPNs?

???

You quoted the Twitter link...I don't understand.

Yea...it seems F0x news isn't either...

As long as you're not an ISP (or an employee of an organization that sells products to/serves 1,000,000+ American users) and "conspiring"/"endeavoring" against the Commerce Department's authority...your post here seems much ado about nothing.

If you do that much business and you're committing crimes, conspiring against a Commer$e Dept investigation, selling compromised hardware, software, services, etc. - I'm sure the Restrict Act would be the least of your criminal/legal/financial worries at that point-in-time - especially if you are a foreign actor/business.

I am closing this topic since it is not specific to OpenWrt and it is a potentially politically sensitive topic. Discussions on VPNs in general (and specifically on legislation) do not belong here. Conversations are welcome, of course, when it involves the the technical methods of implementing VPNs on OpenWrt and/or troubleshooting OpenWrt VPN connectivity.

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