Who Cares It Is Owned By Chinese Company
There are competing claims here. One claim is that it is a national security threat through loss of US citizen privacy. Another is that somehow China is threatening the US through some kind of cultural corruption. At least this is what is in the minds of most people about what the government might have against TikTok. But the actual text of the Bill tells a much more draconian and sweeping chilling story.
Government Given Power to Ban Sites and Apps?
Section 2 would give the government the right
to ban any application controlled by a “foreign adversary” to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following:
(A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of16
such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access,
maintain, or update such application.
(B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Lets unpack that.
What is a foreign adversary? It is ill defined. Our primary trading partner is declared one by arbitrary decision and rhetoric every so often. Nations fall in and out of favor. So in principle can any nation suddenly have any businesses of certain types its citizens pursue in the US treated this way?
The part about providing services arguably can include about every sort of business including ISPs, App Stores, hosting platforms, cloud computing, advertising and much much more that have any part in the operations and marketing of any such app so condemned at any time. This is exactly rhetoric from the previously defeated Restrict Act. It is draconian and tyrannical in the extreme. It is a loaded gun pointed at the head of the internet as we know it.
Teeth: Enforcement
.—An entity that violates subsection (a) shall be subject to pay a civil penalty in an amount not to exceed the amount that results from multiplying $5,000 by the number of users within the land or maritime borders of the United States determined to have accessed, maintained, or updated a foreign adversary controlled application as a result of such violation.
How many users does TikTok have? 50 million or so in the US? So if any business doesn’t play ball with any such decrees against this or another app they could be fined $250 billion dollars? This is completely beyond any rational punishment for such an alleged and difficult to protect yourself from as a business “crime”. Do you think this will have a chilling effect much?
This is blatant war of Government against Free Speech and open Internet. It has nothing real to do with TikTok at all. The goal is much more sinister.
Who Determines What Apps or Companies Are Banned?
The President gets to determine whether such App or Company is a “national security threat”. The Congress has limited time and ability to gainsay it.
Restrict Act Resurrection?
The actual Bill looks uncomfortably like the Restrict Act of some time ago that failed in the US. That Bill would give the US through the Commerce Secretary the power to effectively ban and punish all services that support ANY application or service originating outside the US at is sole discretion. It included draconian punishments for mere service providers that such banned apps may use. It required all providers to keep extensive and privacy endangering records of all usage of apps that may in the future be restricted. Very little Congressional oversight and then quite restricted in allowed operational steps and scope would have been granted.
This new Bill takes much of its language directly from Restrict Act but with the “innovation” of not even involving the Secretary of Commerce.
I believe this TikTok legislation is another attempt to get to this level of government control of the internet and the use thereof. Very convenient in an election year.
This is a real threat to Democracy. Act accordingly.