VPN Users Risk Jail Sentences in the US Under New RESTRICT Act

[rand thompson]

ARTICLE
https://beincrypto.com/vpn-users-risk-20-year-jail-sentences-us-restrict-act/

 

[Jon Pais]

This, from ExpressVPN:

• Some media articles have raised an alarm over whether using a VPN to access services banned in the U.S. could be interpreted as illegal based on the Act. This is based on sections describing services “designed or intended to evade or circumvent the application of this Act” as being covered under the Act. (More on that next.)

So … does the Restrict Act make it punishable to use a VPN?


Media articles have reported that a spokesperson for Mark Warner, one of the leaders behind the bill, explicitly said that “the punishments in the bill would not be used against ordinary citizens.”

This is the media statement from Warner:

Under the terms of the bill, someone must be engaged in ‘sabotage or subversion’ of American communications technology products and services, creating ‘catastrophic effects’ on U.S. critical infrastructure, or ‘interfering in, or altering the result’ of a federal election, in order to be eligible for any kind of criminal penalty … To be extremely clear, this legislation is aimed squarely at companies like Kaspersky, Huawei, and TikTok that create systemic risks to the United States’ national security—not at individual users.

https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/the-...act-explained/

So no, I don’t believe ordinary citizens will be going to jail for using VPNs or accessing TikTok once it’s been banned.

 

[M Harvey]

So no, I don’t believe ordinary citizens will be going to jail for using VPNs or accessing TikTok once it’s been banned.

Thanks for taking the extra step to do some research and sharing detailed results, Jon—I wish more people took the time to do this.

Could be the proposed law needs some clarification so that we can rely on this guidance.