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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: 2) by RS3 on Friday February 03, @04:49PM
I understand your points, and somewhat reluctantly agree in the context of what's been happening in society in general. However I'm a strong personal privacy advocate and I'm deeply troubled that privacy as an issue in and of itself, generally gets pushed aside, and far too many people seem to accept the spying, trading our personal private information, and other violations, as "oh well, what are you going to do?" I'm troubled by that.
Our laws and legal system in general are an insanely complex tangled morass. I'm hoping AI will be used to clean up all the overlaps and conflicting laws. One can hope, right?
Many interpret the Fourth Amendment as containing the words "by the government", but it doesn't and I don't. I see it as protecting all of us from any violation of our privacy. Period.
These people do a pretty good job of summarizing the topic. This link's content is brief and worth a glance:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_privacy [cornell.edu]
which is based on:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fourth_amendment [cornell.edu]
and several other Constitution and Amendment clauses.