Even if you believe that governments should be in the business of banning things such as popular communications tools, the details of the effort to eject TikTok from the United States should give you pause. Predictably, politicians are using fears that the popular social media service is spying on behalf of the Chinese government to propose broad legislation that threatens to affect much more than one app.

Wait, I Thought This Was About TikTok
“Would the RESTRICT Act—a.k.a. the TikTok ban bill—criminalize the use of VPNs?” Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown asked of the potential impact on virtual private networks that shield internet users’ identities and locations.

The answer is: in many cases, yes—but wait, there’s more! The RESTRICT Act proposed by Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) and a list of co-sponsors including Sen. John Thune (R–S.D.), doesn’t mention “TikTok,” or parent company “ByteDance,” or even “social media.” Instead, it hands a whole lot of power to the government, particularly the Secretary of Commerce, “to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries” regarding information and communications technology…