Fact check: No, RESTRICT Act doesn't allow government access to all communication

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·5 min read
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The claim: RESTRICT Act gives the government authority over every form of communication

A March 27 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows images of the RESTRICT Act bill.

"RESTRICT gives the government authority over every single form of communication, anywhere, and authorizes them to label you, or any other human being on earth, a 'national security threat,' reads part of the post's caption. "It will allow them to collect any communication or transaction data on you and everyone else, without any warrant or oversight, and it bans you from encrypting your data to stop them."

The post claims that anyone who violates the act will be labeled a "foreign adversary."

The post generated nearly 3,000 shares in less than a month.

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Our rating: False

The RESTRICT Act doesn’t give the government authority to monitor an individual’s communications, according to legal experts. It is limited to giving the secretary of commerce the ability to review information technology transactions made by foreign entities that pose a risk to U.S. national security.

Bill doesn't authorize government to monitor all communications

Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and a group of bipartisan lawmakers introduced the RESTRICT Act, or the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, to the Senate on March 7.

The bill gives the secretary of commerce authority to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate or otherwise mitigate” any covered transaction involving information and communication technology products and services linked to a foreign adversary that “pose undue or unacceptable risk.”

But nothing in the bill says the government has the authority to monitor an individual’s communication transactions as the post claims, according to James Ivory, a communication technology expert at Virginia Tech. Rather, the act is designed to target foreign adversaries that may spy on or otherwise compromise U.S. residents’ privacy and data, he said.

Republican South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who cosponsors the bill, said in remarks on the Senate floor that the government can't "surveil Americans’ online content'' or "access any American’s personal communications device" under the bill.

Warner wrote in a tweet thread that the government can only review “covered transactions” involving a foreign adversary, which is defined in the bill as “any foreign government or foreign nongovernment person engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or security and safety of United States persons.”

The foreign adversaries listed in the bill include China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.

“The RESTRICT Act only has the power to mitigate extremely high-risk actions – like sabotaging U.S. tech, catastrophically impacting infrastructure, or interfering in our federal elections,” Warner wrote. “Let me say it again: there are NO criminal penalties in this bill for your free speech – you’re even free to drag the RESTRICT Act if you want!”

Ivory said in an email that “wording about the U.S. government monitoring communication and data appears targeted toward networks and data held by services used by a large number of people” – not toward individuals.

“That said, there are credible arguments that the bill’s wording is too broad and vague to guarantee it would never be used in ways that violate individuals’ privacy,” Ivory said. “Claims like this appear to be based on worst-case scenario speculation about how the law might be applied wrongly rather than any information in the bill.”

Fact check: No, RESTRICT Act doesn't give unfettered government access to personal devices

Riana Pfefferkorn, a cybersecurity expert at Stanford University, agreed that nothing in the bill says anything like the post claims.

“Section 9 of the bill gives the Secretary of Commerce the power to review and investigate covered transactions and holdings, and to demand that information be furnished in the course thereof,” Pfefferkorn said in an email. “It is an extreme and unsupported reading to interpret that language as allowing untrammeled collection of Americans' communications, banning encryption or the use of VPNs, or other such rumors.”

Furthermore, the claim that the government can collect communication data "without a warrant" is misleading, according to Pfefferkorn. Federal law specifies what form of legal process federal investigators must use to obtain different types of data, Pfefferkorn said. Sometimes − such as for the contents of Americans' emails − a warrant is required. When seeking other types of data, a subpoena or court order may be sufficient.

"Section 10 of the RESTRICT Act...says that investigators could 'obtain court orders and issue legal process to the extent authorized' by the existing federal laws that govern the issuance of warrants, wiretap orders, subpoenas and court orders," Pfefferkorn said. "That is, the bill appears to conform to existing federal legal requirements for obtaining information such as communications metadata; it does not appear to supplant those existing laws and enable an investigatory free-for-all, as the post you mention claims."

Other claims made in the post about the bill are also wrong.

The RESTRICT act would not ban anyone from encrypting their data, although encrypted messaging applications are among the information and communications technologies that could be reviewed by the secretary of commerce under the bill, Pfefferkorn said.

In addition, nothing in the bill says the government can label Americans a national security threat or foreign adversary, according to Pfefferkorn.

“A ‘foreign adversary’ designation is something that could only be applied to a foreign government or ‘regime,’ not to individual Americans,” Pfefferkorn said.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: No, RESTRICT Act doesn't allow unlimited government access