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> Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing. I s

> Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing. I support a domestic ban on TikTok, and this is embarrassing. You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is spying on your citizens. This undermines any moral authority they could claim, and makes their argument look like: "we want to ban you because we can't stand anyone doing a better job spying on Americans than us".

giraffe_lady 3y ago
What about the last 80 years makes you think the US has any sort of moral authority.
SoftTalker 3y ago
You are 100% correct, but I'm not surprised in the least to hear about this.
- echelon 3y ago
  They are not in fact 100% correct. CFIUS doesn't have authority over or interest in ordinary US citizens. They are 100% concerned with foreign intrusion of national security. That's their singular mandate. This is an auditing operation to determine the extent to which TikTok is a national security threat.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    CFIUS closely works with US intelligence agencies. That in itself isn't damning. But it also bears pointing out that the NSA also doesn't have authority over or interest in ordinary US citizens and is ostensibly 100% concerned with foreign intrusion of national security. Actual activities can and do go much further than intelligence agencies' public mandate.
    - Kalium 3y ago
      I would be surprised and upset if CFIUS did not work closely with intelligence agencies. CFIUS is an agency charged with risk mitigation from foreign actors. Doing that effectively requires good information and risk assessments. If CFIUS did not work closely with intelligence agencies, they would either be incapable of performing their function or running their own intelligence agency.
rrdharan 3y ago
The article has an inflammatory headline, obviously, because that’s how the internet works. If you read the article though the actual content does not suggest they were asking for anything other than the ability to ensure TikTok/Byte Dance weren’t doing anything nefarious… and anyway it fell apart when it became obvious how hopeless that was because of how shady they (Byte Dance) are.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  > does not suggest they were asking for anything other than the ability to ensure TikTok/Byte Dance weren’t doing anything nefarious The Chinese do not think that they are doing anything nefarious either.
  - empath-nirvana 3y ago
    > The Chinese do not think that they are doing anything nefarious either. "Nefarious" is very dependent on context. The CIA spying on China is what the CIA is _supposed_ to be doing -- it's not nefarious in the US context, but surely, to the Chinese, it's "nefarious activity" and the CIA is aware of that. Surely the Chinese know that they're up to no good from the US point of view, even if it's ethically fine from their point of view.
- neon_electro 3y ago
  > Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022, would have given the US government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more access to TikTok’s operations than that of any other social media company. The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would also let US agencies block changes to the app’s terms of service in the US and order the company to subject itself to various audits, all on TikTok’s dime, per Forbes. In extreme cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the US. Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding US-based social media companies to all of these same requirements?
tlb 3y ago
During a hot war, it’s reasonable to be more concerned about enemy surveillance than domestic surveillance. In either case, you lose some privacy. But enemy surveillance can cause you to lose the war, or at least for more people to die before winning. We aren’t at war with China, but the possibility is taken seriously by the US foreign policy establishment, which knows more about the situation that you or I do. The most reliable way to avoid war is to be impossible to beat. So preempting the ability of potential enemies to collect data about our citizens reduces the chance of war.
- che_shirecat 3y ago
  What did the US foreign policy establishment know about Afghanistan and Iraq than you or I do? Last I heard from reliable sources, Iraq had WMD's and were a clear and present danger? Why not just preempt China's nuclear capability too by nuking them?
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I think you are just making a rhetorical flourish, but we should be clear that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, wasn’t an urgent danger, and any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable. American GEOINT, MASINT, SIGINT and TECHINT are likely the best in the world. American HUMINT, OSINT and--somewhat paradoxically--FININT are atrocious. Unfortunately, we frequently ascribe confidence intervals to our clandestine services based on experience with e.g. the NRO.
      - yonaguska 3y ago
        They might be the best in the world- but it doesn't matter because they don't answer to citizens. I trust that they have good information- I don't trust that good information gets to us, our politicians, etc.
echelon 3y ago
The government is auditing TikTok, not using TikTok to spy on US citizens. The US is trying to determine to what extent TikTok is a domestic security threat. CFIUS is an organ of the US government designed to prevent foreign intrusion that risks national security. That's the entity involved here. They don't touch ordinary US citizens. This is not domestic spying. It's investigating the capabilities of a foreign power on US soil.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Of course Snowden showed us that agencies regularly exceed their mandates. Why would that not be possible here?
  - 1MachineElf 3y ago
    All I can tell you is I've worked for a company that had to comply with CFIUS agreement, and honestly, there are no surveillance capabilities whatsoever. They have oversight capabilities and can audit the parts of the business that are covered by the security rules. Ironically, these rules we had to comply with were called the National Security Agreement (NSA) but that entirely coincidental. It was not anywhere near as exciting as people commenting here are speculating.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
The text indicates that they are trying to spy on the company, not the users. And this is a logical attempt if you don't trust the companies masters. Isn't china basically doing the same with every company, just in other ways?
hedora 3y ago
> The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. Granting access to TikTok servers to multiple US agencies is 100% about letting the US spy on users (just as they have the right to under US law, such as the US CLOUD Act, and also via the well-documented and illegal warrantless surveillance programs we all know about). Blocking executive hires is clearly so they can prevent whistleblowers from working in the organization, and is exactly what the US did when it was using Crypto AG to spy on its allies: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-... Anyway, I'm against a ban of TikTok for the same reason that laws that target specific companies or individuals are unconstitutional. Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies.
- ballenf 3y ago
  The hiring veto grants essentially the power to install a covert agent. "We veto all your choices. But what about this guy... Relocating from Langley, VA wouldn't be hard for him."
- afiori 3y ago
  > Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies. This is how the previous "Ban Tiktok" bill basically made VPNs illegal.
- dataflow 3y ago
  > laws that target specific companies or individuals are unconstitutional Do you have a link for this? If you're referring to bills of attainder, my understanding wasn't that they're as broad as just "targeting".
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies This would would destroy billions of dollars in profits, take down most of the ad-tech industry, which is why I suspect it will never happen. It's much easier to target individual companies like TikTok, or Cambridge Analytica while leaving the gravy train going. For the record, I fully agree with you on what the remedy ought to be - just cynical about viability.
pixelatedindex 3y ago
> I support a domestic ban on TikTok I don’t use any social media, so apologies if this is a dumb question. What is TikTok doing that other ones like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook isn’t? The only difference I am seeing is that the parent company is China. Misinformation is omnipresent across all those channels too. So on what basis should we ban them?
- karaterobot 3y ago
  No, you're correct: it being China is the main reason. And it's a sufficient reason for banning it in my mind: cyber warfare is real warfare. It is understood that the government is spying on users of social media (one of several reasons I don't use any either). It's embarrassing for them to admit it, and it undermines any other arguments they could try to make about it, though. If you are claiming a moral high ground, you can't just openly admit you're as bad as the other guy.
  - pixelatedindex 3y ago
    How do you spy on users of social media? Are we talking surreptitiously getting access to cameras/microphone or just getting data on user behavior? The former is obviously a major issue, but the latter can be obtained by anyone because tracking for ads is so ubiquitous and China can just pay to get it.
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - dleeftink 3y ago
      Quite a few ways, whether through device/session fingerprinting [1], in-app browser keystroke tracking [2], frequent third-party post requests [3], individiual app usage patterns [4], geo-tracking [5], dark-patterned user onboarding [6] and continual facial recognition [7]. A canary blog series kicked off by the company itself is worth keeping an eye on to see the 'myths' they want to debunk most scrupously (such as keytracking)[8]. [1]: https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-vm-1 https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-vm-1 [2]: https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-what-javascript-commands-get-executed-in-an-in-app-browser https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-wha... [3]: https://app.urlgeni.us/blog/new-research-across-200-ios-apps-hints-surveillance-marketing-may-still-be-going-strong https://app.urlgeni.us/blog/new-research-across-200-ios-apps... [4]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-alg... [5]: https://www.afr.com/technology/tiktok-admits-collecting-location-data-20230309-p5cqo8 https://www.afr.com/technology/tiktok-admits-collecting-loca... [6]: https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_policymemo_tiktok_final_online.pdf https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_policymemo_... [7]: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/25/971460327/tiktok-to-pay-92-million-to-settle-class-action-suit-over-theft-of-personal-data https://www.npr.org/2021/02/25/971460327/tiktok-to-pay-92-mi... [8]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-truths-a-new-series-on-our-privacy-and-data-security-practices https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-truths-a-new-series...
thefbi 3y ago
I'll just ask a simple question, if you are an American citizen which governments uniformed thugs have the ability to kidnap or kill you: the American or Chinese government? Which of these does not even need to send secret agents or beat your country in a war and has free legal permission to kidnap and kill you? If you computed the results of this problem, the next question I ask is whom are you at more risk from?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illegal-overseas-police-station-chinese-government https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illega... > Two Arrested for Operating Illegal Overseas Police Station of the Chinese Government
  - thefbi 3y ago
    And how many do your governments officially stamped thugs arrest? You don't even need to look up any stats to guess its in the ballpark of thousands or perhaps even the million per year. Edit: example stats for 2016 sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St... In 2016, there were an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes committed in the United States.[88] Over the course of that year, U.S. law enforcement agencies made approximately 10.7 million arrests, excluding arrests for traffic violations.[88] In that year, approximately 2.3 million people were incarcerated in jail or prison.[89]
    - hedora 3y ago
      Also, which steals more of your stuff, on average? This Washington Post article's title offers a clue: "Cops took more stuff from people than burglars did last year." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-... The article is from 2015, but nothing's been done to reverse the trend. I wonder what they've gotten the ratio up to in the last eight years.
nouveaux 3y ago
I am against the US spying on its citizens. With that said, the US's ban on Tiktok is not a moral one. It's purely a competitive one. Why would we want our competitors to obtain more information on us?
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  I'm more worried what a foreign government would do with the private information of every US citizen, as opposed to what a domestic company would do. I'm still worried in both cases, but one of these situations seems much worse to me.
  - yonaguska 3y ago
    A foreign government can't execute a no-knock raid on my home, can't garnish my wages, can't throw me in jail from outside of my country...etc. I know you used the wording "domestic company", but we are talking about governments here.
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      China has shown to have an international police force to enact their will overseas. They probably won’t harm you, but they’re inching closer. I would also be vaguely worried about them sharing data with other companies in China that slowly influence commerce in America. I support the ban from a competitive perspective. Until meta can spy on Chinese citizens, why should the Chinese spy on Americans? Also I support it from a privacy perspective. We can’t as easily ban American companies from spying on us, but we should use any power to limit other companies from starting business spying on Americans. Make it less profitable globally.
      - sitkack 3y ago
        The FBI is also global. https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/international-offices https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/international-offices
    - 3y ago
yieldcrv 3y ago
the list of similarities masqueraded as differences is pretty large one example: arbitrary seizure of private property? turns out that isn't just the domain of pretend communists, its a tenet of our society too
mmcwilliams 3y ago
It's arguable that the public outcry about the risks of spying and the threats of state or country-wide bans on the service are exactly the kind of tactics that would be used to leverage this sort of access by the US.
- anonporridge 3y ago
  There was never a public outcry. There was an elite outcry.
msgilligan 3y ago
They can't do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our pledges.
deleted 3y ago
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nonethewiser 3y ago
Make no mistake - western governments are envious of the spying tools that China has. Our freedoms are in spite of central government and thanks to an independent judiciary and wise founders. Some like Trudeau have even explicitly expressed admiration for the flexibility of the Chinese dictatorship. FBI, CIA, etc. would never decline to use the types of tools that China has.
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  FBI, CIA, etc. would never decline to use the types of tools that China has. That's just the kind of overheated hyperbole derailing so many of our civic discussions nowadays. FBI and CIA have far more effective tools at their disposal. They'd nearly always decline to use the journeyman tools China has in its cyber arsenal.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- Mavvie 3y ago
  The actual quote: > There's a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime. I don't think that's wrong? Although it is certainly in bad taste for a prime minister.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Of course that’s bad. You cant justify dictatorships with good intentions.
    - Micrococonut 3y ago
      What about with good outcomes?
      - FreshStart 3y ago
imiric 3y ago
A ban on TikTok is not about the US government caring about their citizens. It's about a political enemy having access to data the US government also wants access to. If it was about preserving privacy or any moral argument, they would also ban domestic social media. They have no reason to do this since they already have access to domestic data. A second reason might be to mitigate foreign influence and propaganda, but this is also rampant on domestic social media, and they apparently have no desire to prevent this either. This seems ludicrous to me, as these tools are the primary weapons of information warfare.
- miguelazo 3y ago
  It's actually mostly about US tech companies (especially social media) being inferior in the market at this point. Most of the security concerns are actually just hyped up because Byte Dance ate their lunches.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    No it isn’t and this is a Chinese talking point. All social media is a privacy nightmare, this one is a privacy nightmare controlled by a geopolitical adversary. This is common sense and no one can seriously pretend to not understand the difference.
    - miguelazo 3y ago
      Ah yes, must be a “Chinese talking point”. No sensible American could have come to that conclusion on their own. Thank you for illuminating us with your Serious analysis.
- toasted-subs 3y ago
  I can point out that as far as the result to our economy and health social media has been a dounle edged sword. I think people don't understand why you'd use and how to make it effective.
- afiori 3y ago
  Big brother does not like competition
akira2501 3y ago
> This undermines any moral authority The PATRIOT act does this by just existing and continually being extended. Room 641a. Julian Assange's case. Mortal authority left the building in the early 2000s.
- opo 3y ago
  The PATRIOT act itself expired in March of 2020.
  - Tommstein 3y ago
    TIL. Unfortunate timing for what would have otherwise been front-page headline news, if not for the entire world as we otherwise knew it coming to a sudden crashing end.
    - akira2501 3y ago
      It really didn't, though. Parts of it have already been reauthorized through different acts that are still in effect. Point is, we didn't have a referendum, we didn't bolster our laws to prevent such a thing from happening again, and zero investigations of abuses of power have credibly been done in it's wake. "Letting it expire" is not some accomplishment other than kicking the can further down the road.
orangepurple 3y ago
> You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is spying on your citizens The state ran media calling actually peaceful american flag waving re-opening protestors terrorists and murderers for spreading COVID, then literally a matter of days later called the costliest riots in U.S history mostly peaceful protests that were incapable of spreading COVID. This was probably the sign that it was all over and we had entered the biological terrorism era.
godelski 3y ago
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OJFord 3y ago
I'm not American, but I'd sooner assume it's just different parts of government not talking to each other than such an organised concerted effort.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  You can freely assume that (also not American). I think they are toying with their citizens. It is better to think that the gov is incompetent than outright malicious (which is definitely the case). Gor some reason they NEVER drop the ball into giving more freedoms but they ALWAYS drop the ball on taking some away.
vGPU 3y ago
As usual, US government accusations against other countries turned out to involve a hefty dose of projection and “if I can’t have it then nobody can”.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  Isn't most of "surprising new vulnerabilities" NOBUS? (NObody BUt US) I didn't believe for a second that the MS Exchange vulnerability was not known & abused since forever. Now the Chinese have created what Zynga, Facebook, Pinterest, and the rest of the silicon valley failed to succeed. Get everyone meth-ed on an app. 150m Americans is nearly half the population. If you leave out the under 4 and the over 70, that's the majority of active population, having a homing beacon in their pocket reporting to China. This puts Room 641A to shame..
  - vGPU 3y ago
    I’ve long had a suspicion that these vulnerabilities get discovered when china/russia/etc find them and start exploiting them.
deleted 3y ago
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toasted-subs 3y ago
Feels like old mean people trying to get blackmail onto the next generation. A hard no from me. But it doesn't seem to make a difference what I say.
aaron695 3y ago
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giraffe_lady 3y ago

What about the last 80 years makes you think the US has any sort of moral authority.

SoftTalker 3y ago

You are 100% correct, but I'm not surprised in the least to hear about this.

echelon 3y ago
They are not in fact 100% correct. CFIUS doesn't have authority over or interest in ordinary US citizens. They are 100% concerned with foreign intrusion of national security. That's their singular mandate. This is an auditing operation to determine the extent to which TikTok is a national security threat.
- scarmig 3y ago
  CFIUS closely works with US intelligence agencies. That in itself isn't damning. But it also bears pointing out that the NSA also doesn't have authority over or interest in ordinary US citizens and is ostensibly 100% concerned with foreign intrusion of national security. Actual activities can and do go much further than intelligence agencies' public mandate.
  - Kalium 3y ago
    I would be surprised and upset if CFIUS did not work closely with intelligence agencies. CFIUS is an agency charged with risk mitigation from foreign actors. Doing that effectively requires good information and risk assessments. If CFIUS did not work closely with intelligence agencies, they would either be incapable of performing their function or running their own intelligence agency.

rrdharan 3y ago

The article has an inflammatory headline, obviously, because that’s how the internet works. If you read the article though the actual content does not suggest they were asking for anything other than the ability to ensure TikTok/Byte Dance weren’t doing anything nefarious… and anyway it fell apart when it became obvious how hopeless that was because of how shady they (Byte Dance) are.

pessimizer 3y ago
> does not suggest they were asking for anything other than the ability to ensure TikTok/Byte Dance weren’t doing anything nefarious The Chinese do not think that they are doing anything nefarious either.
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  > The Chinese do not think that they are doing anything nefarious either. "Nefarious" is very dependent on context. The CIA spying on China is what the CIA is _supposed_ to be doing -- it's not nefarious in the US context, but surely, to the Chinese, it's "nefarious activity" and the CIA is aware of that. Surely the Chinese know that they're up to no good from the US point of view, even if it's ethically fine from their point of view.
neon_electro 3y ago
> Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022, would have given the US government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more access to TikTok’s operations than that of any other social media company. The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would also let US agencies block changes to the app’s terms of service in the US and order the company to subject itself to various audits, all on TikTok’s dime, per Forbes. In extreme cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the US. Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding US-based social media companies to all of these same requirements?

tlb 3y ago

During a hot war, it’s reasonable to be more concerned about enemy surveillance than domestic surveillance. In either case, you lose some privacy. But enemy surveillance can cause you to lose the war, or at least for more people to die before winning. We aren’t at war with China, but the possibility is taken seriously by the US foreign policy establishment, which knows more about the situation that you or I do. The most reliable way to avoid war is to be impossible to beat. So preempting the ability of potential enemies to collect data about our citizens reduces the chance of war.

che_shirecat 3y ago
What did the US foreign policy establishment know about Afghanistan and Iraq than you or I do? Last I heard from reliable sources, Iraq had WMD's and were a clear and present danger? Why not just preempt China's nuclear capability too by nuking them?
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I think you are just making a rhetorical flourish, but we should be clear that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, wasn’t an urgent danger, and any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable. American GEOINT, MASINT, SIGINT and TECHINT are likely the best in the world. American HUMINT, OSINT and--somewhat paradoxically--FININT are atrocious. Unfortunately, we frequently ascribe confidence intervals to our clandestine services based on experience with e.g. the NRO.
    - yonaguska 3y ago
      They might be the best in the world- but it doesn't matter because they don't answer to citizens. I trust that they have good information- I don't trust that good information gets to us, our politicians, etc.

echelon 3y ago

The government is auditing TikTok, not using TikTok to spy on US citizens. The US is trying to determine to what extent TikTok is a domestic security threat. CFIUS is an organ of the US government designed to prevent foreign intrusion that risks national security. That's the entity involved here. They don't touch ordinary US citizens. This is not domestic spying. It's investigating the capabilities of a foreign power on US soil.

wkat4242 3y ago
Of course Snowden showed us that agencies regularly exceed their mandates. Why would that not be possible here?
- 1MachineElf 3y ago
  All I can tell you is I've worked for a company that had to comply with CFIUS agreement, and honestly, there are no surveillance capabilities whatsoever. They have oversight capabilities and can audit the parts of the business that are covered by the security rules. Ironically, these rules we had to comply with were called the National Security Agreement (NSA) but that entirely coincidental. It was not anywhere near as exciting as people commenting here are speculating.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

The text indicates that they are trying to spy on the company, not the users. And this is a logical attempt if you don't trust the companies masters. Isn't china basically doing the same with every company, just in other ways?

hedora 3y ago

> The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. Granting access to TikTok servers to multiple US agencies is 100% about letting the US spy on users (just as they have the right to under US law, such as the US CLOUD Act, and also via the well-documented and illegal warrantless surveillance programs we all know about). Blocking executive hires is clearly so they can prevent whistleblowers from working in the organization, and is exactly what the US did when it was using Crypto AG to spy on its allies: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-... Anyway, I'm against a ban of TikTok for the same reason that laws that target specific companies or individuals are unconstitutional. Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies.

ballenf 3y ago
The hiring veto grants essentially the power to install a covert agent. "We veto all your choices. But what about this guy... Relocating from Langley, VA wouldn't be hard for him."
afiori 3y ago
> Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies. This is how the previous "Ban Tiktok" bill basically made VPNs illegal.
dataflow 3y ago
> laws that target specific companies or individuals are unconstitutional Do you have a link for this? If you're referring to bills of attainder, my understanding wasn't that they're as broad as just "targeting".
sangnoir 3y ago
> Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies This would would destroy billions of dollars in profits, take down most of the ad-tech industry, which is why I suspect it will never happen. It's much easier to target individual companies like TikTok, or Cambridge Analytica while leaving the gravy train going. For the record, I fully agree with you on what the remedy ought to be - just cynical about viability.

pixelatedindex 3y ago

> I support a domestic ban on TikTok I don’t use any social media, so apologies if this is a dumb question. What is TikTok doing that other ones like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook isn’t? The only difference I am seeing is that the parent company is China. Misinformation is omnipresent across all those channels too. So on what basis should we ban them?

karaterobot 3y ago
No, you're correct: it being China is the main reason. And it's a sufficient reason for banning it in my mind: cyber warfare is real warfare. It is understood that the government is spying on users of social media (one of several reasons I don't use any either). It's embarrassing for them to admit it, and it undermines any other arguments they could try to make about it, though. If you are claiming a moral high ground, you can't just openly admit you're as bad as the other guy.
- pixelatedindex 3y ago
  How do you spy on users of social media? Are we talking surreptitiously getting access to cameras/microphone or just getting data on user behavior? The former is obviously a major issue, but the latter can be obtained by anyone because tracking for ads is so ubiquitous and China can just pay to get it.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - dleeftink 3y ago
    Quite a few ways, whether through device/session fingerprinting [1], in-app browser keystroke tracking [2], frequent third-party post requests [3], individiual app usage patterns [4], geo-tracking [5], dark-patterned user onboarding [6] and continual facial recognition [7]. A canary blog series kicked off by the company itself is worth keeping an eye on to see the 'myths' they want to debunk most scrupously (such as keytracking)[8]. [1]: https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-vm-1 https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-vm-1 [2]: https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-what-javascript-commands-get-executed-in-an-in-app-browser https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-wha... [3]: https://app.urlgeni.us/blog/new-research-across-200-ios-apps-hints-surveillance-marketing-may-still-be-going-strong https://app.urlgeni.us/blog/new-research-across-200-ios-apps... [4]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-alg... [5]: https://www.afr.com/technology/tiktok-admits-collecting-location-data-20230309-p5cqo8 https://www.afr.com/technology/tiktok-admits-collecting-loca... [6]: https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_policymemo_tiktok_final_online.pdf https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_policymemo_... [7]: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/25/971460327/tiktok-to-pay-92-million-to-settle-class-action-suit-over-theft-of-personal-data https://www.npr.org/2021/02/25/971460327/tiktok-to-pay-92-mi... [8]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-truths-a-new-series-on-our-privacy-and-data-security-practices https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-truths-a-new-series...

thefbi 3y ago

I'll just ask a simple question, if you are an American citizen which governments uniformed thugs have the ability to kidnap or kill you: the American or Chinese government? Which of these does not even need to send secret agents or beat your country in a war and has free legal permission to kidnap and kill you? If you computed the results of this problem, the next question I ask is whom are you at more risk from?

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illegal-overseas-police-station-chinese-government https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illega... > Two Arrested for Operating Illegal Overseas Police Station of the Chinese Government
- thefbi 3y ago
  And how many do your governments officially stamped thugs arrest? You don't even need to look up any stats to guess its in the ballpark of thousands or perhaps even the million per year. Edit: example stats for 2016 sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St... In 2016, there were an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes committed in the United States.[88] Over the course of that year, U.S. law enforcement agencies made approximately 10.7 million arrests, excluding arrests for traffic violations.[88] In that year, approximately 2.3 million people were incarcerated in jail or prison.[89]
  - hedora 3y ago
    Also, which steals more of your stuff, on average? This Washington Post article's title offers a clue: "Cops took more stuff from people than burglars did last year." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-... The article is from 2015, but nothing's been done to reverse the trend. I wonder what they've gotten the ratio up to in the last eight years.

nouveaux 3y ago

I am against the US spying on its citizens. With that said, the US's ban on Tiktok is not a moral one. It's purely a competitive one. Why would we want our competitors to obtain more information on us?

cooper_ganglia 3y ago
I'm more worried what a foreign government would do with the private information of every US citizen, as opposed to what a domestic company would do. I'm still worried in both cases, but one of these situations seems much worse to me.
- yonaguska 3y ago
  A foreign government can't execute a no-knock raid on my home, can't garnish my wages, can't throw me in jail from outside of my country...etc. I know you used the wording "domestic company", but we are talking about governments here.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    China has shown to have an international police force to enact their will overseas. They probably won’t harm you, but they’re inching closer. I would also be vaguely worried about them sharing data with other companies in China that slowly influence commerce in America. I support the ban from a competitive perspective. Until meta can spy on Chinese citizens, why should the Chinese spy on Americans? Also I support it from a privacy perspective. We can’t as easily ban American companies from spying on us, but we should use any power to limit other companies from starting business spying on Americans. Make it less profitable globally.
    - sitkack 3y ago
      The FBI is also global. https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/international-offices https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/international-offices
  - 3y ago

yieldcrv 3y ago

the list of similarities masqueraded as differences is pretty large one example: arbitrary seizure of private property? turns out that isn't just the domain of pretend communists, its a tenet of our society too

mmcwilliams 3y ago

It's arguable that the public outcry about the risks of spying and the threats of state or country-wide bans on the service are exactly the kind of tactics that would be used to leverage this sort of access by the US.

anonporridge 3y ago
There was never a public outcry. There was an elite outcry.

msgilligan 3y ago

They can't do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our pledges.

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nonethewiser 3y ago

Make no mistake - western governments are envious of the spying tools that China has. Our freedoms are in spite of central government and thanks to an independent judiciary and wise founders. Some like Trudeau have even explicitly expressed admiration for the flexibility of the Chinese dictatorship. FBI, CIA, etc. would never decline to use the types of tools that China has.

bilbo0s 3y ago
FBI, CIA, etc. would never decline to use the types of tools that China has. That's just the kind of overheated hyperbole derailing so many of our civic discussions nowadays. FBI and CIA have far more effective tools at their disposal. They'd nearly always decline to use the journeyman tools China has in its cyber arsenal.
- deleted 3y ago
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Mavvie 3y ago
The actual quote: > There's a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime. I don't think that's wrong? Although it is certainly in bad taste for a prime minister.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Of course that’s bad. You cant justify dictatorships with good intentions.
  - Micrococonut 3y ago
    What about with good outcomes?
    - FreshStart 3y ago

imiric 3y ago

A ban on TikTok is not about the US government caring about their citizens. It's about a political enemy having access to data the US government also wants access to. If it was about preserving privacy or any moral argument, they would also ban domestic social media. They have no reason to do this since they already have access to domestic data. A second reason might be to mitigate foreign influence and propaganda, but this is also rampant on domestic social media, and they apparently have no desire to prevent this either. This seems ludicrous to me, as these tools are the primary weapons of information warfare.

miguelazo 3y ago
It's actually mostly about US tech companies (especially social media) being inferior in the market at this point. Most of the security concerns are actually just hyped up because Byte Dance ate their lunches.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  No it isn’t and this is a Chinese talking point. All social media is a privacy nightmare, this one is a privacy nightmare controlled by a geopolitical adversary. This is common sense and no one can seriously pretend to not understand the difference.
  - miguelazo 3y ago
    Ah yes, must be a “Chinese talking point”. No sensible American could have come to that conclusion on their own. Thank you for illuminating us with your Serious analysis.
toasted-subs 3y ago
I can point out that as far as the result to our economy and health social media has been a dounle edged sword. I think people don't understand why you'd use and how to make it effective.
afiori 3y ago
Big brother does not like competition

akira2501 3y ago

> This undermines any moral authority The PATRIOT act does this by just existing and continually being extended. Room 641a. Julian Assange's case. Mortal authority left the building in the early 2000s.

opo 3y ago
The PATRIOT act itself expired in March of 2020.
- Tommstein 3y ago
  TIL. Unfortunate timing for what would have otherwise been front-page headline news, if not for the entire world as we otherwise knew it coming to a sudden crashing end.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    It really didn't, though. Parts of it have already been reauthorized through different acts that are still in effect. Point is, we didn't have a referendum, we didn't bolster our laws to prevent such a thing from happening again, and zero investigations of abuses of power have credibly been done in it's wake. "Letting it expire" is not some accomplishment other than kicking the can further down the road.

orangepurple 3y ago

> You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is spying on your citizens The state ran media calling actually peaceful american flag waving re-opening protestors terrorists and murderers for spreading COVID, then literally a matter of days later called the costliest riots in U.S history mostly peaceful protests that were incapable of spreading COVID. This was probably the sign that it was all over and we had entered the biological terrorism era.

godelski 3y ago

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OJFord 3y ago

I'm not American, but I'd sooner assume it's just different parts of government not talking to each other than such an organised concerted effort.

HenryBemis 3y ago
You can freely assume that (also not American). I think they are toying with their citizens. It is better to think that the gov is incompetent than outright malicious (which is definitely the case). Gor some reason they NEVER drop the ball into giving more freedoms but they ALWAYS drop the ball on taking some away.

vGPU 3y ago

As usual, US government accusations against other countries turned out to involve a hefty dose of projection and “if I can’t have it then nobody can”.

HenryBemis 3y ago
Isn't most of "surprising new vulnerabilities" NOBUS? (NObody BUt US) I didn't believe for a second that the MS Exchange vulnerability was not known & abused since forever. Now the Chinese have created what Zynga, Facebook, Pinterest, and the rest of the silicon valley failed to succeed. Get everyone meth-ed on an app. 150m Americans is nearly half the population. If you leave out the under 4 and the over 70, that's the majority of active population, having a homing beacon in their pocket reporting to China. This puts Room 641A to shame..
- vGPU 3y ago
  I’ve long had a suspicion that these vulnerabilities get discovered when china/russia/etc find them and start exploiting them.

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toasted-subs 3y ago

Feels like old mean people trying to get blackmail onto the next generation. A hard no from me. But it doesn't seem to make a difference what I say.

aaron695 3y ago

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