A Motion to Prohibit Users from Using BitTok in the U.S. Social Media Against Foreign Adversaries: a Report from the Senate Intelligence Committee
Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Republican Senator Marco Rubio, announced legislation that would ban TikTok in the United States. The Chinese parent company of TikTok, Byte Dance can’t be trusted with user data in the US because of the potential national security risk, according to a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The proposed legislation would “block and prohibit all transactions” in the United States by social media companies with at least one million monthly users that are based in, or under the “substantial influence” of, countries that are considered foreign adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.
In the past few weeks, a number of states jumped on the bandwagon, increasing the pressure on Congress to act. States have banned TikTok on state government devices from Maryland to South Dakota.
The posturing comes at a pivotal moment in the years-long negotiations between TikTok and the US government on a potential deal that aims to address national security concerns and allow the app’s continued use in the US.
“We will continue to brief members of Congress on the plans that have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States,” McQuaide added.
How China is secure: State and Local Laws are needed to protect us from the invasions of censorship by the App Store, or the FBI Director’s Era
There’s no evidence yet that that has actually happened. Security experts say it is possible because China has national security laws that fit into a broader anti-China narrative about issues such as trade and human rights. The concerns were raised after it was reported that US user data had been accessed multiple times by China-based employees. TikTok disagrees with the report.
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But its widespread usage across the U.S. is alarming government officials. In November, the FBI Director raised eyebrows when he told the lawmakers that the app might be used to control devices.
The Senate bill has exceptions for law enforcement, national security interests and activities, and security researchers.
Berkman acknowledges how difficult it would be to get users to leave the app. Last year, the app reported that more than a billion users flock to its site each month.
It is not clear if the company would ever be used for sinister purposes, however national security experts say that China-based businesses need to give unfettered access to the authoritarian regime if information is ever sought.
Most drastic measures have not advanced because of the lack of political will, or courts intervening to stop them.
What do U.S. users really think about TikTok and the CFIUS committee on foreign investment in the United States? A response to McAuley and Patil
“I think some concern about TikTok is warranted,” said Julian McAuley, a professor of computer science at the University of California San Diego, who noted that the main difference between TikTok and other social media apps is that TikTok is much more driven by user-specific recommendations.
“While ByteDance claims that it maintains its operations in the United States separately, there is no easy way to determine the extent to which that claim is true,” said Sameer Patil, a professor at the University of Utah who studies user privacy online.
“While social media companies are certainly harvesting all kinds of data about users, I think it’s usually overblown to what extent they ‘know’ about users on an individual level,” he said.
He suggests that TikTok users restrict their posts to friends and remove location data from videos if they are worried about their privacy.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful federal panel that reviewing foreign investment in the U.S., began examining TikTok during the Trump administration.
Another possible resolution is that the committee is satisfied with the steps TikTok has taken to ensure there is a firewall between U.S. user data and ByteDance employees in Beijing and the Chinese government.
CFIUS deliberations happen behind closed doors. It is not clear when the committee might finish its investigation, nor is it known which way it is leaning.
Why the Proposed $tiktok$-Ban is More About Politics Than Privacy According to Explicit Laws: A Pedagogical Analysis
All state devices have been banned in Nebraska since 2020. The Department of Financial Services in Florida also has it. The states of Louisiana and West Virginia have partial bans.
This is in part because Byte Dance is required by Chinese law to assist the government, which could include sharing user data from anywhere in the world.
There is no more time to waste on pointless negotiations with the company. “It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.”
“It certainly makes sense, then, for U.S. soldiers to be told, ‘Hey, don’t use the app because it might share your location information with other entities,” said Chander. “But that’s also true of the weather app and then lots of other apps that are existing in your phone, whether they’re owned by China or not.”
He is a professor at the University of Washington. He claims that the proposed legislation in the United States is more about tensions in the region than about Tik Tok.
The truth is, if the Chinese intelligence sector wanted to get information on any particular state workers in the United States, they wouldn’t have to go through TikTok.
“It’s always easy – and this happens across the world – to say that a foreign government is a threat, and ‘I’m protecting you from that foreign government,’ he says. I think we should be cautious about how politicized that can be in order to achieve political ends.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1144745813/why-the-proposed-tiktok-ban-is-more-about-politics-than-privacy-according-to-exp
The Case of ByteDance, an Internet Company with a Big-Data Intellectual Property, and the First Amendment’s First Amendment
Even if a ban of TikTok was to be imposed, both Calo and I believe that banning a communication platform would raise First Amendment concerns. Calo believes the conversation could lead to better policy for Americans.
“I think that we’re right in the United States to be finally thinking about the consequences of having so much commercial surveillance taking place of U.S. citizens and residents,” he said. The Federal Trade Commission is very interested in doing something about it, so we should do something to address it, but by passing comprehensive privacy rules or laws, which is something the commission seems interested in doing.
Despite years of reports, hearings and proposed legislation, Congress can not help but draw attention to its lack of progress on regulating American tech giants more broadly.
The tech industry’s biggest players have faced allegations in the past. Big Tech has been made out as one of Washington’s largest villains for a range of reasons, including knee-capping new rivals, harm to children and mental health, and spreading hate speech.
Beckerman said on Tuesday that he believes a lot of the issues are overblown, but that the government can solve them.
ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent $270,000 on them, according to public records gathered by the transparency group Open Secrets. By the end of last year, its lobbyist count had more than doubled and the company had spent nearly $5.2 million on lobbying.
There was an increase in the amount of money spent on internet industry lobbying last year. Next was $19 million, followed by $10 million. Combined, that’s roughly $49 million in lobbying — almost 10 times what was spent by TikTok’s parent, which nevertheless clocked in at number four on the list.
For much of this year, supporters of AICOA insisted the legislation had enough votes to pass, and they called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring it to a floor vote. The bill never got the floor time it supporters wanted after intense tech lobbying and doubts about whether it had the votes. The same fate awaited other tech-focused antitrust bills, such as one that would have forced Apple to allow users to download iPhone apps from any website, not just its own app store.
The bill that would force Meta, Google and other platforms to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues was briefly passed this month. But the legislation stumbled after Meta warned it could have to drop news content from its platforms altogether if the bill passed.
The Problem of the Digital Economy: The Challenges of Tech Leaders in the Light of Recent Proposed Section 230 Senate Measures and a Majority of Democratic Senators
Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.
The future of the internet has been called into question as a result of the decisions about the rules the government might impose on tech platforms.
In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Democrats have said Section 230 should be changed because it gives social media companies a pass to leave some hate speech and offensive content unaddressed, while Republicans have called for changes to the law so that platforms can be pressured to remove less content.
The cross-cutting politics and the technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology, not to mention the potential consequences for the economy of screwing it up, have combined to make it genuinely difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.
Establishing a Republican brand is important. A central tenet of what unites Republicans now is taking a strong stance [and] standing up to China,” says Thad Kousser, professor of political science at U.C. San Diego.