April 19, 2023–Due Process Institute led a coalition of civil liberties organizations to urge the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to oppose S. 686, the “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” or the “RESTRICT Act.” The RESTRICT Act aims at information and communications (ICTs) technologies like TikTok that are considered a threat to the United States.
The criminal provisions in the RESTRICT Act are extremely troubling and dangerous for a number of reasons. First, nearly all of them, even those ironically called “specific unlawful acts,” are extraordinarily vague. They would punish the violation, attempted violation, or conspiracy to violate a regulation or order that has yet to be conceived or drafted and does not even currently exist. The Constitution requires notice in criminal statutes so that the public will know what conduct may render them liable. The Supreme Court has held that a statute criminalizing “loitering” provided notice that was constitutionally insufficient because it did not specify what conduct constituted “loitering.” In this bill, the criminal provisions are even less clear. The regulations that this bill makes it a crime to violate do not even exist yet and so no conduct is specified at all. This is unfair to the public who must have notice of what a crime is and is constitutionally questionable at best.
Second, it constitutes a massive delegation of criminal lawmaking authority to the administrative state. There has been renewed skepticism of the administrative state and abuses of power over the past several years. There have been several legislative efforts to reassert congressional power on a variety of issues, ranging from war powers to emergency powers to trade. Even later this year, Congress is expected to consider major reforms to how agencies interact with technology companies through various surveillance authorities.
Third, even the “specific unlawful acts” that are, in fact, specified are extraordinarily harsh or entirely unnecessary. One is a 20-year term in federal prison for noncompliance with a “reporting or recordkeeping” requirement. Twenty years in prison for a paperwork violation is extremely severe and would only exacerbate our nation’s mass incarceration. Additionally, making a false statement to the Government is criminalized, but this exact act is already criminalized in numerous other places in federal law. This new criminalization will only worsen the trial penalty, incentivize prosecutors to pile on charges, and coerce people, including innocent people, into guilty pleas.
Finally, the RESTRICT Act also includes an alarming expansion of federal civil asset forfeiture. Federal civil asset forfeiture laws flip the presumption of innocence on its head by requiring the person from whom property is seized to prove that it was unconnected to criminal activity. Given this incredibly unfair standard and the fact that law enforcement can keep a huge percentage of the proceeds of forfeited items, it is unsurprising that it has been well documented that civil asset forfeiture is ripe for abuse.
This legislation is far more expansive and encompassing than its supporters admit and echo the words of the House Financial Services Committee, which recently noted, “The RESTRICT Act is using TikTok as a smokescreen for the largest expansion of executive power since [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.” The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation must consider these overcriminalization concerns as it approaches any action on the RESTRICT Act.