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TikTok's CEO agrees to testify before Congress for the first time in March:
As Congress prepares to vote on a nationwide TikTok ban next month, it looks like that ban may already be doomed to fail. The biggest hurdle likely won't be mustering enough votes, but drafting a ban that doesn't conflict with measures passed in the 1980s to protect the flow of ideas from hostile foreign nations during the Cold War.
These decades-old measures, known as the Berman amendments, were previously invoked by TikTok creators suing to block Donald Trump's attempted TikTok ban in 2020. Now, a spokesperson for Representative Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Ars that these measures are believed to be the biggest obstacle for lawmakers keen on blocking the app from operating in the United States.
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that lawmakers' dilemma in enacting a ban would be finding a way to block TikTok without "shutting down global exchanges of content—or inviting retaliation against US platforms and media." Some lawmakers think that's achievable by creating a narrow carve-out for TikTok in new legislation, but others, like McCaul, think a more permanent solution to protect national security interests long-term would require crafting more durable and thoughtful legislation that would allow for bans of TikTok and all apps beholden to hostile foreign countries.
[...] Back in 1977, Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to empower the president to impose sanctions on and oversee trade with hostile nations. The plan was to prevent average American citizens from assisting US enemies, but the law troubled publishers doing business with book authors and movie makers based in hostile nations. Those concerns led Congressman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) to propose an amendment in 1988, which passed, exempting "information and informational materials" from IEEPA and blocking presidents from regulating these materials.
As technology evolved, in 1994, another IEEPA amendment specifically exempted electronic media, leading to today, when everything from a tweet to a TikTok would be free from presidential regulation under the so-called Berman amendments. How this prevents Congress from passing a new law remains unclear, but the WSJ reports that lawmakers are hesitant to draft legislation limiting TikTok if that could threaten those protections.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by rpnx on Friday February 03 2023, @03:09AM (4 children)
I will sue day 1 this legislation is enacted to block it. (I can even use Chat GPT to assist me with writing drafts!)
TikTok may be a "bad thing", but what is worse is allowing the government to block free speech. I have every right to hear what the Chinese have to say, and the First Amendment protects the "Marketplace of Ideas" from governmental coercion. For that purpose, it is essential that all ideas, including capitalism and communism, have an equal place in the Marketplace of Ideas, to be judged by the voters. The legitimacy of the government arises from the people, not the other way around. If the people vote for communism, then the legitimate government is communist. If the "free market" government wants to sell capitalism, it must convince us voters that capitalism is better on a fair playing ground. That means we need to hear other viewpoints, like those of socialists and communists, and judge for ourselves which is better.
On that note, the moment "national security" can be used to justify shutting down pure speech (i.e. TikTok), the United States will no longer have any claim be a free country.
(Score: 2, Troll) by mcgrew on Friday February 03 2023, @09:34PM (3 children)
How is blocking a foreign government's spy app blocking Americans' free speech? Fuck China. [mcgrew.info] Apologies for the grammar error in that article, maybe I should edit it..
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Saturday February 04 2023, @08:21AM (2 children)
Because it's not a spy apparatus, it's a data hoarding social media platform just like facebook/google/etc? And I also have every right to speak to Chinese people? Free Speech doesn't stop at the border.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday February 04 2023, @04:42PM (1 child)
If facebook/google/etc were in fact required by US law to turn all data over to the US government, they would indeed be spy apparatuses. You are allowed to speak to the Chinese, but not to buy Hawaii equipment from him to put in our infrastructure, nor is it legal to tell him exactly what was in those documents Trump, Biden, and Pence took home.
Orwell's Oceana was China in real life. [mcgrew.info] That link chronicles me meeting a bunch of Chinese right off the boat, and their horror at my opinion of Presiden Reagan, whose tax cuts for the rich unleashed an orgy of corporate takeovers that cost me a fourth of my income. TLDR version: They are terrified of our freedom and don't believe it really exists.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Saturday February 04 2023, @05:25PM
I think you are forgetting that the Freedom of Speech applies to devices that transmit speech. Calling it "infrastructure" is a form of misdirection to try to justify unconstitutional restrictions. The government has no business regulating speech platforms based on economic concerns about China. There is currently no proof that TikTok has acted in any way different than Google. This is all deflection to try to justify the unjustifiable. Were the courts to accept your evil sophistry, they would be corrupt beyond recognition.
Lets look at the facts in an objective light. Fact 1. The government has claimed that you have no expectation of privacy with regard to information you voluntarily share with third parties. Based on this, TikTok can hardly be considered "spying" because the users voluntarily share the information. There is no evidence that TikTok actually conducts any type of surveillance that is not already known to be conducted by entities like Google or Facebook. Even if we were to reject that premise it still doesn't follow that the information can't be sent to the party you voluntarily share it with.
Fact 2. There's no actual evidence that TikTok is doing anything that services like Facebook or Google don't do. Many people have simply claimed without any evidence that TikTok could do such things because it is controlled by the Chinese government but there's no actual evidence that they have done it which is something that clearly the government would have access to if it wanted to find out. It's not like reverse engineering the bite code of an executable is impossible there's no technological reason why we wouldn't be able to figure out if TikTok is in fact doing some spying and I suspect that the government has already reversed engineered and analyzed it and found that it's not actually doing that so all they have to rely on is this fear mongering.
Fact 3. US rivalry with China is primarily driven by protectionism of the US chip industry and the desire to stay on top of the world economic stage but has very little to do with military threats from China. China isn't a particularly militant nation and the only conflict that they might be reasonably expected to get involved thing would be the Taiwan dispute. But China isn't stupid enough to attack Taiwan at this moment.
Fact 4. The trade war with China has been harming the US economic interests and we've suffered job losses and economic decline as a result of this trade war. COVID-19 has little to nothing to do with the problems that we've been experiencing at this point; all of the problems with shipping containers out of China being unreachable for American businesses, etc. Mostly it is a result of policies in China as well as the United states that restrict trade between our two countries. (And Donald Trump is the one who started this dumb Trade War.) A return to a more normal relationship between the US and China would be welcome by me as it would improve economic relations and improve the standard of living for everyone. There is some belief by Americans that somehow China has come to take our jobs; but even if China takes a certain portion of our jobs the cheaper prices that we pay for manufactured goods more than make up for it and that's why everything's getting more expensive. Yes, we have more jobs, but we can afford much less with the jobs we do have now. Overall, it's a net loss for us. The recent inflation is caused in large part by people paying American workers higher wages for the same products than they would if they were paying Chinese workers. COVID is not the cause, it's just a convenient scapegoat at this point. People's attitude didn't change that much, people are demanding higher wages because prices are rising, prices are rising because of governmental barriers to trade.
Fact 5. Justifications to ban an app don't depend on if the App is made by a Chinese or American person. The government needs a compelling governmental purpose and in general requires proof. When freedom of speech is involved, the government has the burden of proof and can't just make flimsy excuses. The government will need to prove it's justifications in court. If "National Security" becomes an exception to the single core freedom at the heart of democracy (Freedom of Speech) then we will be the same as China restricting people's Free Speech in Hong Kong under grounds of "National Security". Free Speech "with National Security exception" is not Free Speech at all, because that is specifically the behavior that the First Amendment is designed to prevent. The Government claiming a security interest in regulating speech is the core playbook of how tyrants rule.
Fact 6. Allowing China to distribute "propaganda" is a core function of the First Amendment. Propaganda is anything designed to affect your viewpoint, which is the core function of the Marketplace of Ideas. Saying some viewpoints are bad and must be silenced is counter to the core principles of Freedom of Speech. The principle of the Marketplace of Ideas is that people are exposed to both sides of each story, then decide for themselves which side is true. The fact there is some "misinformation" doesn't justify a crackdown on speech. The "Marketplace of Ideas" requires the opposing viewpoint to construct counter arguments to defeat Chinese propaganda. This is because in the "Marketplace of Ideas" the U.S. government's viewpoints don't hold a privileged position over others. And they cannot, because the power of the government is supposed to flow from the opinion of the voters, not the other way around. When the government regulates propaganda, it regulates the ideas shared by the people. Which is the reverse of how it's supposed to work. In the U.S. system, the ideas and opinions of the people are supposed to regulate the policy of the government, instead of the policy of the government regulating the ideas of the people. In order for this system to work, the ideas need to flow freely, and to ensure that bad governments can be replaced by, the government doesn't get to single out ideas as "bad".