Why should the government be able to control which apps people in the United States install and use on their own personal phones? What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"?
Are they going to ban particular websites next? And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? Is China going to simultaneously track what Walmarts users shop at and implant Manchurian Candidate messages into the users brains? At best, this is an extreme and short-sighted proposal. Political posturing, wasting time and attention while solving no real problem.
This is one reason I hate locked down hardware like iDevices, and the whole App store model. If there were not these central points of control such a thing would infeasible to implement. Banning a company like Apple from distributing an App on their app store effectively bans it.
Like you can't install any software on iPhone that has not been "blessed" (aka signed) by one Apple's private keys. Well unless you find an exploit to free the device from their control. What is so crazy about this is Apple does not even own the hardware after they sell it, but they won't let you disable signing in the boot ROM or at the OS level. If it were about security they would at least let you load your own signing keys. It's not though in my opinion it's about control. I even consider it a violation of property rights.
This is simply because if you own something you should be able have full enjoyment of your property without interference. Further, one major fundamental aspect of owning tangible property is the right of exclusion. The cryptographic system Apple has setup allows Apple to control the right of exclusion when it comes to deciding what software the CPU will and will not run. Apple is effectively reserving the right of exclusion regarding what CPU can execute via cryptography. Crucially, when something is sold legally this means all property rights are transferred to the buyer with few exceptions. One being copyright the original holder of the intangible property reserves/retains the right to copy/reproduce. Despite not legally having the right of exclusion Apple decides what can be excluded from running on other peoples hardware even after selling it.
The short and simple is I should be able to decide what to include or exclude from something I own. In this case, one must ask Apple first which shows how your right of exclusion has been infringed.
This also applies to other devices not just iDevices, but anything with locked down boot ROMs/loaders, but Apple is well known for their "walled garden" (I don't like this term nothing garden like about property right violations).
As for tik tok it's an easy target for such government overreach.
> Why should the government be able to control which apps people install and use on their own personal phones?
The theoretical argument will be national security and “protect the children”.
> What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"?
Flies out the door for the causes mentioned above. Reasonable? No. Reality? Yes.
> Are they going to ban particular websites next?
This already happens at some levels. Note that The Guardian website was not accessible on DoD computers during the Snowden revelations. There was a practical reason (mass spillage is a PITA for folks who diligently report and process the reports of such things), but it was also a futile exercise of control.
> And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat?
1. Lots and lots of tracking data.
2. Lots and lots of real time on-the-ground info.
3. The ability to shape the discourse and mood within certain groups via the algo (assuming that the algo can be influenced by the PRC government, which folks widely believe it can).
You may not believe these things are significant, but I encourage you to chat up some sigint (esp. analysts) and psyops folks to see what they have to say about this type of data and medium.
I don't mind if a site or app isn't visible on "company" computers/hardware. It's not yours. Same as a bus driver taking the bus home for the night and driving around his mates.
BUT
I wonder how the sigint would feel about having their bug/issue tracking software open to a foreign governments alterations? If they have an issue with it, they need to stop using Jira.
If Meta can't compete because their Facebook platform is so toxic know one wants to use it isn't the vaunted hand of the free market where users and advertisers have spoken with their wallets. why should we subsidies their bottom line by killing alternative.
> What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"?
The first Red Scare. Eugene Debs was imprisoned for opposing WW1.
But the US has only ever been in favour of free trade when it benefits them, they did similar things with tariffs against Japan in the late 1980s, have blown up the Nordstream pipelines, etc.
>US has only ever been in favour of free trade when it benefits them
Except there is no freedom of investment in China right now. All US corporations are being forced to minority shares and joint ventures with government entities, not to mention Entertainment (movies, games) and Internet companies are outright banned from that market altogether.
>did similar things with tariffs against Japan in the late 1980s
Japan did exactly the same thing China does today. Foreign currency quota and ownership limits "MITI'S SUCCESSES AND FAILURES IN CONTROLLING JAPAN'S TECHNOLOGY IMPORTS" https://www.jstor.org/stable/43294946 And it worked wonderfully for them.
"JAPAN AND THE BIG SQUEEZE September 30, 1990. HOW DID Japan destroy the American television industry? The secret history of that strategy reveals how Japanese manufacturers and the Japanese government first created an anti-competitive cartel ..."
"Japan's raid on the American market dates back to 1956, when the largest Japanese manufacturers formed the Home Electronic Appliance Market Stabilization Council, an illegal production cartel. The intent of the cartel was to monopolize the domestic market for television receivers, radios and other home electric products and to exclude foreign imports. Once their home market was secure, they would launch a drive against the far richer American market."
"TARIFFS WON`T AFFECT MOST JAPANESE TV SETS Apr 23, 1987 The new tariffs on Japanese color televisions will have little or no effect on the U.S. market, because most sets are exempt."
I get your point but an unparalleled spyware tool being deployed by an adversarial, authoritarian nation on our largely unsuspecting populous is something the government should intervene over. Perhaps we would never see this support were it not for lobbying efforts by the likes of Meta, or a looming cold war with China, but that doesn't mean the move itself is a short-sighted proposal.
People should have the freedom to run whatever software they choose. That does not mean the government should allow a country like China to operate within the US. And of course spying done by Meta is a whole different conversation.
Depending on the law, yes. Passing a law to silence your critics or your competition is absolutely Orwellian. It's no different than burning/banning books because they contradict the ideology of those in power. It's the establishment of the Ministry of Truth to determine what is and what is not acceptable for the peasants to know. At it's core it is the suppression of the free exchange of ideas.
Now, an orderly society cannot have an absolute freedom of speech in all facets, but a free society should be able to tolerate a significant amount of objectionable speech and tolerate those people who wish to consume that speech.
Yes in some cases but those should be rare, marginal and not done simply because the content is objectionable.
Many find pornography objectionable but those engaged in it that are of the age and capacity to enter in creating then it should not be censored by the government. Child pornography should be censored because they are not of the age or capacity to understand.
Doesn’t feel a lot different than some European countries banning Google Analytics for violating the GDPR which I’m guessing many of you ‘personal liberty’ folk are on board with.
I think TikTok is a garbage app that numbs the mind of the already willfully ignorant people, but I absolutely do not support the idea of banning it. The US is supposed to hold itself up as a beacon to other countries on the core ideas that people are free to express themselves and as function of that expression choose which peoples to listen to, even TikTok trash.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As much as I distain TikTok as an aggregator and disseminator of information it should easily fall under the classification of the press. It's clearly speech and an assembly of the people. Unfortunately the same twisted minds that established the FCC and said "on a radio (iphone of the day)" you do not have freedom of speech but only freedom to listen to government licensed actors will likely be able to use their evil ways to ban TikTok. Which effectively means that all content on the internet can be arbitrarily regulated FCC style. This is a massive step towards the US adopting Chinese style information suppression policies.
Every US citizen should be aware of the UN and adopting. While these do not carrying the force of law they were written in modern times and they absolutely express the sentiments of the founders of this nation around many issues. This is very clearly detailed in article 19.
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
I'm not from the ticktock/insta/snapshat generation and do not care about it, but, having a little sister and a young coworker :
Ticktock is almost as good as YouTube and way, way better than most social media to learn stuff. History, science, but also cooking techniques (my sister worked at a starred restaurant and still learned from it), tech and CS tips. Actually it seems better than YouTube on that last point as you don't have to watch the full 20 minutes to find the code example.
Still inferior to text, but Ticktock 'numbing the mind' : less than most other social media apps, as much as YouTube.
> I think TikTok is a garbage app that numbs the mind of the already willfully ignorant people, but I absolutely do not support the idea of banning it. The US is supposed to hold itself up as a beacon to other countries on the core ideas that people are free to express themselves and as function of that expression choose which peoples to listen to, even TikTok trash.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Constitution also says "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Chinese are people and tanks are arms, but that doesn't mean the Constitution protects their right to drive a column of tanks up to the White House.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact, but broad and literal readings of certain sections would make it so.
Currently living in Hong Kong and the whole “we have to ban <foreign media X> to protect our ’national security’ and citizens from subversive ideas from the scary foreign adversaries” bears a striking resemblance to the national security laws the CCP enacted in HK and used to effectively end press freedom and democracy.
You could replace some specifics and have a plausible ccp/hkgov press release
Im not a tiktok user or really care. Part of me thinks it would be fun to watch what happens if tiktok got banned in the US. it just seems ridiculous, the reasons for it seems like something out of a tv show.
There's another part of me that falls for a slippery slope, it could be a bad precedent to start banning foreign stuff, like we could end up having a US only internet
> There's another part of me that falls for a slippery slope, it could be a bad precedent to start banning foreign stuff, like we could end up having a US only internet
The balkanization of the internet has been a thing for a while (e.g., China, online poker/gambling, region restrictions for streaming, etc.).
I expect this to continue, and it may get to levels of “ridiculous tv show”.
All that said, I think that there will be a tacit understanding that tech savvy people will almost always have work arounds, and that will be conveniently overlooked by most powers-that-be.
"Many countries have banned or temporarily limited access to Facebook. Use of the website has also been restricted in various ways in other countries. As of July 2022, the only countries to continually ban access to the social networking site are China, Iran, North Korea, Uganda and Russia."
That's cool, considering banning apps now for regular citizens.
On a technical note, I wonder how this will be implemented. China was probably a pioneer in this with the Great Firewall. Russia created a shitlist of websites in 2012 that gets passed down to the ISPs that want to keep their license (for now easily bypassable with VPN, but I'm pretty sure that can be tightened if needed).
So I wonder how this is going to work. Will Google Play, AT&T and them receive a regularly updated list of apps and websites that citizens are censored from seeing? Kind of like OFAC for the banks? Will there be any consequences for people who decide to ruin national security by bypassing this garbage and sneaking some tiktoks into their lives?
>Russia created a shitlist of websites in 2012 that gets passed down to the ISPs that want to keep their license (for now easily bypassable with VPN, but I'm pretty sure that can be tightened if needed).
I don't see how. To prevent citizens from visiting websites, you'd have to ban VPNs, since ISPs have no visibility into VPN traffic. Banning VPN use could be done, but it would have a lot of economic effects since businesses use VPNs a lot for security purposes. You could also make a special government-approved VPN with a backdoor for the government, and only allow citizens to use that. Or, you could require citizens to install special spyware on their devices. All of these solutions to the VPN problem would be rather cumbersome and difficult for a government to implement and enforce, however.
> You could also make a special government-approved VPN with a backdoor for the government, and only allow citizens to use that
This one could be done. Order ISPs to filter out VPN-looking traffic to anywhere that's not approved. Yes, it requires effort, but overall sounds doable (unfortunately)
"US officials have raised concerns that the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance to hand over information collected from users that could be used for intelligence or disinformation purposes."
Oddly Atlassian/Jira has the same issue. Australia has something called assisted access. So a developer at Jira could alter the encryption or face jail. And they wouldn't even be able to tell their boss about the "order".
No idea how these two things are different in any way.
>So a developer at Jira could alter the encryption or face jail. And they wouldn't even be able to tell their boss about the "order".
How exactly would this work?
dev: "Here's a merge request, please approve it."
team lead: "Why are you changing the encryption? What is the purpose of this? And why are you working on this task when it's not part of our sprint planning? Where did you get the idea for it?"
dev: "I can't tell you that. You have no right to read this code change! You need to approve this MR now, or else!"
team lead: "See me in my office. We need to talk to HR."
That sounds ridiculous, but in reality I would think the govt would probably approach a C-level exec, and then serve all the people they need to silence from there. Working from the top down.
I was just going off of the previous comment, that the govt would force some random developer to make changes in a company's codebase. Such a thing would be ridiculous for the reason I pointed out: there's no way to keep it secret.
Even if the govt approaches a C-level exec, I don't see how this would be kept a secret. The codebase is generally available within a company to everyone who has access, which for a large project is many people. Are they going to somehow swear all the devs in a department to secrecy? How do they enforce this? If the devs had security clearances and this job required keeping state secrets, that's one thing, but that's not what we're discussing here. If I were working in a civilian (non-clearance) job and the govt forced some nefarious changes into the codebase I was working on, I wouldn't feel any obligation to not inform the press.
>These orders can force people to hand over their passwords, their biometric data, or knowledge of any relevant systems and devices. They don’t just target the person suspected of a crime, but can also cover their associates, owners of the devices in question, systems administrators and those who have used the devices.
>Not complying with these requests under the SD Act can lead to up to 10 years imprisonment and an A$126,000 (US$88,212) fine.
>In a similar manner, the changes to the ASIO Act enable the Director-General to petition the Attorney-General to force individuals to provide the same kind of data. Refusing to comply can lead to up to 5 years of jail, or an A$63,000 (US$44,106) penalty. One of the biggest issues with the new powers under the ASIO Act is that there is no judicial oversight – the authorities never have to go before a judge to get permission.
>It’s worth noting that these powers can be used in the investigation of any crime with a maximum penalty of three years or more. It seems heavy-handed that someone who refuses to comply could potentially end up with a sentence that exceeds the penalty for the original crime.
>I wouldn't feel any obligation to not inform the press.
Worth noting that anyone who reported on it would face jail time as well.
All this stuff goes directly against the First Amendment which guarantees free speech. Australia of course has no constitutional right to free speech, but America does.
Yes. And of course in most countries, it's not even necessary for there to be an explicit law to that effect, if the government orders a company to add a backdoor, they'll do it.
To me, it's not even difficult. It shouldn't be illegal for an app to be mindlessly entertaining. Almost all American pop culture is, literally every thing that comes down the pike is the dawn of Idiocracy until the next thing.
And as far as propaganda, emotional and psychological control, manufacturing consent, etc. go, Tiktok has nothing on the incestuous relationship between American social media and the incentives of data capitalism, and the military industrial complex.
Meanwhile, the government of Texas wants to censor the internet to make access to information about abortion illegal. We don't have to posit a slippery slope scenario for this, shit's already sliding. The precedent created by letting governments ban access to social media and create ideologically-driven silos of information is much worse.
There's nothing hypocritical about refusing to allow a foreign business to operate in your country. Countries do this all the time. If TikTok wants to open-source their source code and let Americans run it themselves on their own hardware, and the US government prevented that, then you'd have a point.
Do you think it's "oppression" if the US government won't allow VW to sell emissions-test-cheating cars in the US?
What an uncomfortably Orwellian move.