As they create increasingly sophisticated voice and face recognition products, technology firms are lobbying state lawmakers to discourage restrictive new laws that critics call necessary to prevent the violation of user rights.
(A) that critics call necessary to prevent the violation of user rights
(B) which critics call these necessary to prevent the violating of user rights
(C) which critics call necessary to prevent user rights being violated
(D) that critics call them necessary to prevent the violating of user rights
(E) which critics call necessary to prevent the violating of user rights
Scroll down for the answer.
Answer: A
Which vs. That, -ING vs. Noun
The easiest way to eliminate answers is to know that which follows comma whereas that does not follow a comma. There is no comma before the pronoun at the beginning of the underlined portion, so that is required and the possible choices can be narrowed to (A) and (D). (D) contains an unnecessary/ungrammatical pronoun as well as a wordy and awkward gerund phrase (the violating of), while (E) uses the cleaner and more idiomatic noun violation. (A) is thus correct.
