fkiblaze said:
I still don't get how government make website bans but just allow VPNs. Even in china i hear how everyone just uses a VPN to get around CCP bans. Are government so stupid they don't even know to ban VPNs?
I'm sure they have some proposals drafted but don't have a valid reason to justify it. For example, the Patriot Act would likely have caused huge outrage if 9/11 hadn't happened. To give you a more recent example, there's the RESTRICT act which so far has only been proposed
FYI, the secretary they're referring to in the quotation is the Secretary of Commerce.
"In general.—The Secretary with the relevant executive department and agency heads is authorized to and shall take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate, including by negotiating, entering into, or imposing, and enforcing any mitigation measure to address any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the Secretary determines—" Source, page 10, lines 12 through 20.
So basically, this bill would allow the Secretary of Commerce to view transactions to countries outside the States that the government deems "suspicious." I interpreted this as a step in that direction. Problem is that many VPNs are based either in the US or in US friendly countries. For now it's at the corporate level but I harbor no doubts they would inflect it on us if they could.