Twelve US Senators Back Giving Commerce Secretary New Powers To Ban TikTok (reuters.com) 84
A bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators will introduce legislation on Tuesday that would give Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo new powers to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok and other foreign-based technologies if they pose national security threats, Senator Mark Warner said. From a report: "I think it is a national security threat," Warner said on CNBC, adding that the bill would give Raimondo "the ability to do a series of mitigation up to and including banning" TikTok and other technologies that pose national security risks. Warner said it would apply to foreign technologies from six nations -- China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. The group, led by Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, includes Democrats Tammy Baldwin, Joe Manchin, Michael Bennett, Kirsten Gillibrand and Martin Heinrich along with Republicans Deb Fischer, Jerry Moran, Dan Sullivan, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, Warner's office said. TikTok, the ByteDance-owned app used by more than 100 million Americans, has come under increasing fire over fears user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests. TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew is due to appear before Congress on March 23.
National Security? (Score:2, Interesting)
How does an app or website impact national security? I mean, yes, if Senators post their secrets on TikTok, fine, but otherwise, that's a pretty big stretch, and their complaints basically are the modern equivalent of "All these kids with their [x] are losers and need to get off my lawn."
All these Senators are out of touch, and need to get off the Senate floor.
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Well, no. Well, actually, first of all just surfing the site they can glean a terrifying amount of psychological profiling info from you just based on stuff like your mouse movements or what you spend time watching, but gathering data from you... that's not the limit of the threat. The real threat comes from the narrative they can construct about reality by just choosing what to show you. Even if you know they're doing it that doesn't make you completely immune to it, and it can affect you even if you someh
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Oh, and incidentally, if you really can use TikTok without feeding it any information (which is laughable), everyone in the country would have to have the same level of intelligence and self-discipline as you for it to be any real protection against the population as a whole being effectively psychologically manipulated.
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Recently you had Iraq and Afghanistan but they had become less than useful lately so China is the new one.
As an enemy China has a couple of advantages, the best one of which it has a fairly brutal authoritarian government. The disadvantage is that China is way too big and powerful to ever actually attack, even for America. They are also integrated into the global economy, so plenty of American shareholders would l
Re: National Security? (Score:2)
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Well, no. Well, actually, first of all just surfing the site they can glean a terrifying amount of psychological profiling info from you just based on stuff like your mouse movements or what you spend time watching, but gathering data from you... that's not the limit of the threat.
Good, because so far, that's a purely hypothetical threat that has no obvious downside. There really aren't meaningful national security concerns from some foreign entity knowing that some random person likes watching videos of cats or whatever, because of the limited ability to leverage that information to manipulate people.
The real threat comes from the narrative they can construct about reality by just choosing what to show you. Even if you know they're doing it that doesn't make you completely immune to it, and it can affect you even if you somehow hypothetically feed them no information in return.
And still this is not an obvious national security threat unless you start to see them featuring videos promoting the overthrow of the government or something. I mean yes, ostensibly,
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Most of Facebook's users are at least old enough to vote, so there's at least a semi-plausible route for election tampering, though even that seems like a stretch to me.
A very naive view. see: cambridge analytica scandal
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Most of Facebook's users are at least old enough to vote, so there's at least a semi-plausible route for election tampering, though even that seems like a stretch to me.
A very naive view. see: cambridge analytica scandal
I've read about the scandal, and I have yet to see any actual evidence that it had any actual impact, with the exception of monetary losses from settling the resulting lawsuits.
Besides, PsyOps doesn't require a willing social network. You could do that on pretty much any existing social network just as easily. All you need are billions of people who share every story that confirms their world view without giving any of them careful scrutiny. The flaw isn't the social networks. The flaw is us.
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They literally used treason to throw an election. It's kinda a big deal, dude.
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They literally used treason to throw an election. It's kinda a big deal, dude.
Who is "they"? CA is a research firm that provides data to anybody willing to pay them. And what election, and what treason? [Citation needed]
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The 2016 election of course. Treason: selling private information illegally to our enemies. It's all in the lawsuit. Citation not needed. Where have you been for the past decade? Mars?
Re: National Security? (Score:2)
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
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Hair-splitting drivel. I was at the Satanic orgy where they planned it all with the help of the Russian mafia.
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> Well, no. Well, actually, first of all just surfing the site they can glean a terrifying amount of psychological profiling info from you just based on stuff like
Apply the laws equally. If this is a real problem then apply it to facebook and instagram and twitter.
If you aren't worried about US companies with these powers then it isn't a real problem.
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But I specifically mentioned Facebook because I frankly think they should ban it too. Did you not read my whole statement?
While you're banning facebook (Score:2)
At some point, people are going to have to be educated properly from early youth to develop their own personal armor against faulty or distorted information produced with intent by other humans and groups of humans. There is no other fundamental solution.
Maybe we need a new round of updated Grimm's fairy tales, to warn of the many ways of being misled, and the conse
Re:National Security? (Score:4, Informative)
I think by now we all understand social media algorithms are pretty powerful tools for opinion shaping.
I think by now we can all recognize something has happened in our society where the level of discord and fundamental assumptions about motives have shifted. We used to afford even the people we vehemently disagreed with in this country the assumption their motives were what they said they are and that they wanted to bright future for their fellow citizens.
I think its clear social media and messaging has played a big part of that. I think MOST of the damage done has been at the hands of cynical domestic actors, but its also been proven that even if McCarthy did not finger the right people in many cases most of them were useful idiots and Soviets were absolutely were running propaganda operations to sow descent and undermine the cohesiveness of American society.
I think there can be little doubt actors like PRC and modern Russia are about the same game. It IS a threat and I think its not unreasonable to be a little flexible when it comes to 1A rights for foreign powers, maybe even foreign persons while not in US territories, when it comes to giving them blanket access to message the American public.
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I'll agree there was a modern 'era of good feelings' in the post war years that I think colors our vision of American society and social discord. Certainly things were as fractious at other points in our history.
I do think the nation is better when society is more unified and I think our nation is stronger when we see ourselves as 'Americans' and not little sub tribes of alphabet letters, racial origins, religious groups, sects within those religious groups etc
I don't think the issue is 'reading what other
Glad you asked! (Score:1, Flamebait)
I've posted this video before, but it's still relevant... [youtube.com]
1. The algorithm they use on Western audiences is completely different from the one used in Asia. To wit, TikTok is tame in Asia. It is woker than woke in the West because it's designed to push insanity on young Westerners as part of a psyop.
2. The app has certain features baked into it that security researchers are finding to be scary WRT it being a malware delivery platform to mobile devices.
In other words, the CCP is legitimately brainwashing Ameri
WOKE ALERT (Score:2)
What is your definition of woke?
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What is your definition of woke?
The original definition was "To be aware of systemic racism present in society."
The right-wing politicians then co-opted it to mean "Content intended to redress discrimination against any minority group."
The right-wing electorate, however, frequently considers it to mean "Anything that makes me feel uncomfortable as a straight cisgender white person.", and also sometimes "I lack the critical thinking skills necessary to criticize a form of entertainment based upon its literary merits and feel the need to in
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It's the same argument that 1950s adults argued about rock'n'roll corrupting the youth.
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So brainwash them otherwise.
Every single time someone says something we don't like, the best response is to counter the erroneous speech with wiser speech. Why would this app be a special case, where government has to draw their loaded gun and point it at their own citizens' faces, instead of simply telling those citizens "installing that might be a bad idea"?
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The algorithm they use on Western audiences is completely different from the one used in Asia. To wit, TikTok is tame in Asia. It is woker than woke in the West because it's designed to push insanity on young Westerners as part of a psyop.
You're ignoring the fact that the content Americans are watching on TikTok, is being created by other Americans. TikTok is basically just an automated version of the same sort of echo chambers you find elsewhere on the internet. The only difference between it and how Reddit works, is that the downmodding for not following the groupthink in a specific sub is performed by actual humans.
Pushing groupthink isn't exclusive to TikTok. YouTube for some reason still thinks I'm interested in watching right-wing c
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Lets say a war were to happen (god forbid) between china and the US ..
That may be worth talking about in the event of war, But war has not happened yet. Until such time as it does - Free Speech is a fundamental right in the US, and has no exception in peace time.
That fundamental liberty includes tools used to spread speech - Does not matter whether it is propaganda or not. You can no more ban an app publisher than you can ban distribution of books of foreign origin - In fact, they are all supposed
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You can no more ban an app publisher than you can ban distribution of books of foreign origin - In fact, they are all supposed to be protected by the 1st Amendment if a US person wishes to disseminate or read/listen to that speech, then they have a constitutionally-protected legal right to.
That is true for adults, but "protecting children" from scary books is an actual thing with the right wing. How is protecting them from scary apps any different?
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Where would the war be fought? China have no way of getting troops to America, so America invades China?
It's completely mental.
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posted this in another thread on the topic, but what a horrible, horrible idea.
from a legal standpoint, how do they expect to firmly and concretely define the tiktok app?
>company changes the name of the app
>company offloads it onto a shell company
>company changes their name
etc etc, every single time some silly little politicians overreach, a loophole is devised to circumvent it (invariably leading to another god damn rule/law/regulation)
laws and legislation explicitly crafted to whack one specific
Re:National Security? (Score:5, Interesting)
How does an app or website impact national security? I mean, yes, if Senators post their secrets on TikTok, fine, but otherwise, that's a pretty big stretch, and their complaints basically are the modern equivalent of "All these kids with their [x] are losers and need to get off my lawn."
All these Senators are out of touch, and need to get off the Senate floor.
There are multiple methods for spying. One is intercepting communications and directly observing target information. That's likely rare on non-secure channels. Another method is casting a wide net for information that can be mined. Mining can be for the target information, but it can also be for social mining, i.e., looking for information that indicates who is vulnerable and how that person can be targeted. For example, identifying people with access to target information along with their social network and correlating that with vulnerability information such as financial/medical/mental/family/ideological/etc. struggles/affinities/etc. This social information can then be used to compromise, blackmail, or recruit individuals.
Intelligence mining has been greatly facilitated with recent advances in AI and ML, so it's arguably a greater concern now than many decades ago when mining was more manual. Finding the needle in the haystack for spying is easier now.
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Not when all the data is in China. The US isn't doing this to 'protect' sensitive data, they're doing this to spy on you. The US talks about "security" while denying their residents and citizens a right to control Personal Identifying Information: It doesn't add-up.
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How does an app or website impact national security?
We're a decade into an era of asymmetric warfare where totalitarian regimes (China, Russia) ban externally-owned social media companies, heavily censor what their domestic ones show, and create influence in social media in other countries. Our open liberal democracies have not yet done that.
Until now the influence they've been able to wield has been limited to what they can do through ads, tweets, posts. But once the foreign power controls the social media platform itself, it suddenly gains hugely more powe
First They Came For TikTok... (Score:2)
I wonder which freedoms our benevolent overlords will deem us unworthy to have next.
Missed an opportunity (Score:1)
Re-globalize the internet (Score:2)
We need to take geography and nationality away from the Internet, and get it back early-web original vision of a word-wide web.
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Kewl child porn + crime platform you've proposed (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's time for a web-3-style end-to-end-encrypted distributed storage layer for the Internet, similar to IPFS. Then, new social media applications can be built on top of that, and the data kept away from all government snooping. We need to take geography and nationality away from the Internet, and get it back early-web original vision of a word-wide web.
How badly do you want bitcoin scams?...ransomware?...child porn?...or do you just want violent terrorists to plan attacks more efficiently? Sorry, regulation is good....the more precise, the better. Too much is bad, but too little just leads to easy crime, including from Islamic terrorists who WILL kill people in their region, if not elsewhere...not to mention our local terrorists, who are far less prolific, but still scary.
The solution to gov abuse is to fix the people elected, not circumvent government entirely. This is why we need democracy and to vote the bums out. I hate this tendency for tech bros to think the gov is meant to be ignored and bypassed rather than fixed. The only reason we're in this situation is that douchebags like you didn't vote the last several elections, thinking you were above the ugly mess of politics, and your angriest, oldest relatives did.
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I agree completely with you, personal responsibility and agency are bad, we really do need a benevolent mommy government to shepherd us from wrongthink and feelbads.
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The solution to gov abuse is to fix the people elected, not circumvent government entirely.
No... that's not a solution. It is an extremely important safety check that the government is NOT allowed to regulate speech and speech platforms. They are allowed to regulate concerns regarding commerce and business, But not speech itself, and not the content of anybody's messages, or which Books, or Software, or Apps a Publisher is allowed to distribute, Etc.
You can never ensure the government against officehol
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I think it's time for a web-3-style end-to-end-encrypted distributed storage layer for the Internet, similar to IPFS. Then, new social media applications can be built on top of that, and the data kept away from all government snooping.
We need to take geography and nationality away from the Internet, and get it back early-web original vision of a word-wide web.
Yes, and anything you post online, such as that comment on slashdot is owned by you as an NFT!
And its traceable to you as well, so we can be sure that any rights etc over the content are protected for you!
But we're going to need to KYC anyone with a slashdot account though so be prepared to submit some selfies, copies of utility bills, bank account details etc etc.
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I think it's time for a web-3-style end-to-end-encrypted distributed storage layer for the Internet, similar to IPFS
Why not use IPFS? OR more plainly... what is it about current IPFS tech. that prevents it from achieving this?
The lack of a system for reliably ensuring that certain files will remain available globally and be distributed by different participants who have no relationship with whoever published the files?
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Present evidence or kick rocks. (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't use TikTok. I don't give a rat's ass about it. However, if you're going to tell me I can't use an app on MY FUCKING PHONE, you need to provide information as to how it is being used to harm me. No, fuck y
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Hard no! Either provide evidence that this is being used for espionage or fuck off. How much did Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk pay you to kill their rival? Both seem kind of broke and failing at the social media business, so enjoy it while it lasts, they probably can't make future payments.
Only espionage from the USA and other 5 eyes nations are allowed.
And they are allowed to spy the absolute FUCK out of you.
Re:Present evidence or kick rocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
ByteDance USA has claimed they're not sending data to the CCP...are they?...don't know...don't know if I even care. It's a service that makes a TON of money. Why would they jeopardize that? ... So either give me a GOOD, tangible reason why I should be concerned, or please kindly fuck off.
I think we're a decade into an age of asymmetrical warfare that open liberal democracies will inevitably lose.
A totalitarian state like China and Russia can and will (1) shape the beliefs of its populace, (2) prevent open liberal democracies from doing the same to its own populace. An open liberal democracy can't shape the beliefs of its populace, and can't stop the totalitarian regimes from doing that to its own people.
(If you think you are somehow immune to having your views shaped by social media? good for you. If you think the general population of your country is immune to having its views shaped by social media? that airing all sides on a top will stimulate fruitful debate across your country's population which will eventually arrive a healthy state? -- those to me are the extraordinary claims that need proof).
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Sorry I used words too ambiguously. I meant that China can and will (2) prevent open liberal democracies from doing the same to China's own populace (e.g. with outright blocks on most western platforms like facebook, twitter, ...)
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In the 1990s, it wasn't left-wing fundamentalists proclaiming the US government was evil: That was the PR arm of a US political party.
Very true, no-one on social media is claiming communism, socialism, or even welfare, is good for the US people. These anti-socialism idealists strangely refuse to remove interstate highways, public education, public libraries, subsidized medicine, and pensions from government. They excuse practice of the very ideology they claim to oppose.
ohhhh please (Score:2)
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I assume the CCP loves the extra money and local success story much more than advertising data they already could buy about our shithead teenagers.
I agree with everything else you said except for the part above.
CCP does not always care about the money. Or else they would not have started crackdowns on Alibaba, Tencent, a couple of years ago. Cost those and other large companies 100s of billions in terms of share value in the exchange. And even now some big figure involved with tech investments have gone missing within China, supposedly assisting the China government with something or other.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
CCP has shown that they don't
It's like banning cars from felons. (Score:3)
I assume the CCP loves the extra money and local success story much more than advertising data they already could buy about our shithead teenagers.
I agree with everything else you said except for the part above.
CCP does not always care about the money. Or else they would not have started crackdowns on Alibaba, Tencent, a couple of years ago. Cost those and other large companies 100s of billions in terms of share value in the exchange. And even now some big figure involved with tech investments have gone missing within China, supposedly assisting the China government with something or other. https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
CCP has shown that they don't care about the money if it gets them whatever else they are looking for. Even if they bring down local success stories / successful entrepreneurs / businessman.
But that's the only argument I ever hear...they "could" misuse it against their stated goals. My response is "anything can be misused." A felon could kill people with a car, does that mean no felons should ever drive?...kinda hard to find jobs that way. This is an app with a stated mission...to entertain people. The mission makes sense. Can it be abused? Sure...but so can any service that advertised. I am not comfortable with the gov saying no Chinese app can ever advertise.
Now if I saw they wer
"and other foreign-based technologies" (Score:2)
Imagine handing that power to a Trump selected Commerce Secretary.
Or Biden (Score:1)
Imagine handing that power to a Trump selected Commerce Secretary.
Imagine handing that power to the very first trans black woman in history to be appointed to that position!
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My exact point (Score:1)
What's your point exactly?
My exact point is that Biden does not consider competence for the job when deciding on appointments.
Specifically, he's appointed a large set of people to rather important positions, based on nothing more than DEI considerations and ignoring experience or general competence, and we've had several incidents of national import where the incompetence of the Biden appointments has been revealed to widespread criticism.
Such as: Pete Buttigeg, secretary of transportation, who can bitch all day about racist roads,
F***ing Cowards (Score:2)
These legislators and the President were elected to make these decisions.
They don't want to be held accountable at election time for their votes.
Do your job!
I dare you! (Score:2)
I double dare you! To ban EVERYTHING Chinese from the USA.
Go on, do it.
I said it before (Score:1)
so joining them? (Score:1)
so now we have to use a vpn to bypass government censorship of the internet??? sounds wierdly familiar for some reason. Havent we been condemning that for years?
What Criteria? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the problem is that Tik-Tok is violating user privacy and drag-netting information.
What if the problem is entirely different?
I think the problem that the US government perceives, is that Tik-Tok is part of asymmetric warfare by totalitarian states to alter public sentiment in the US (and in other open liberal democracies).
Owning the Tik-Tok platform gives vastly more power than just running ads on social media. That's because you control the "algorithm" i.e. what shows up in people's feeds, and you have vastly more aggregate information about the populace. The warfare is asymmetric becaus
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Is there any possible way this might be legal? (Score:2)
Here's my hypothesis: if we come up with a persuasive argument that Congress already has the lawful power (without enacting a new constitutional amendment) to give the Commerce Secretary the ability to ban TikTok, I think that same argument can be used to show that Congress currently has the lawful power to ban The King James Bible.
Furthermore (same hypothesis) if we think Congress can't lawfully ban the King James Bible, then I think whatever argument you use to support that position, will also support the
Blanket authority to bureaucrats (Score:2)
The Congress has been avoiding its responsibility to legislate by delegating authority to make huge decisions to unelected bureaucrats. If the Commerce Secretary gets the authority to ban TikTok, then whoever is in this office will have the authority to ban anyone they wish in the future. Banning TikTok is OK with me, but if Congress wants to do it they should debate it publicly and then vote. Delegating this decision and others like it does not serve the interests of the American people. It just provid
The Commerce Secretary should defer (Score:2)
You can't ban a site without prosecuting it first. (Score:2)
1. Prove that it breaks US laws. Or...
2. Use trade authority to ensure it's locally managed and autonomous.
Just "banning" it would violate pretty much the entire Constitution. Free speech, free association, due process, etc. etc.