CFIUS is the governing body who decides which foreign investments are a threat to the U.S., not the president, and they have been investigating TikTok for two years without finding anything despite the recent executive order. It makes the executive order look more like political headline bait than having actual teeth, especially considering IEEPA prohibits executive power from being used to block speech or media.
It amazes me that such incorrect assertions get so mindlessly upvoted on Hacker News.
You've written that elsewhere that "Bytedance is a Cayman Islands company, not Chinese. Despite having offices in Beijing, Bytedance and Tiktok are not beholden to the Chinese National Intelligence law", so it seems you might be unknowingly (or knowingly) spreading incorrect information.
The HN community deserves a lot of blame for being unable to filter out such falsehoods.
[1] https://securitytoday.com/articles/2019/11/04/tiktok-nationa...
The cynic in me thinks that HN is not immune to astroturfing by foreign or domestic actors anymore than Reddit or Facebook are.
At first glance it would appear that Trump has authority under the IEEPA do take the actions he has. Tiktok is most likely going to base their legal action on challenging the constitutionality of the IEEPA. Tiktok's argument of violating due process alludes to this being the case.
Congress specifically limited presidential authority when passing the act, and TikTok is protected under IEEPA 50 U.S. Code § 1702(b):
> The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly - (1) any postal, telegraphic, telephonic, or other personal communication, which does not involve a transfer of anything of value; ... (3) the importation from any country, or the exportation to any country, whether commercial or otherwise, regardless of format or medium of transmission, of any information or informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds.
Since there is data collected and something of value, it seems that although parallels can be drawn between the content on TikTok and the list of explicitly allowed items, the whole of TikTok is something different than the items listed in #3.
(And if those are the only exceptions the powers are quite broad.)
#3 is actually an interesting one. Would it prevent the President from being able to stop a ship owned by a foreign national if it was carrying a single CD-ROM of informational materials? What if it was full of such CD-ROMs? What if part of a frozen bank account was going to be used to facilitate the transfer of information? Would not some hindrance of the free flow of information be an inevitable side effect of ANY action under IEEPA? Of course, one imagines it was not the intention of the drafters of the law to let a single CD-ROM neuter the entire presidential power. My non-lawyer understanding is that courts normally establish some kind of "balancing test" in these scenarios that can be used to draw a line in the sand. But from e.g. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R45618.pdf it's unclear whether there's any case law that specifically establishes the boundaries. Regardless, this will be a very interesting saga.
Since the order only blocks transfers of value last I checked this exception does not seem on point at all.
We're literally talking about a company which, by virtue of being a Chinese company with significant footprint in the US, has Chinese intelligence agents on staff and can _easily_ swing the elections in ways the alleged "Russian troll farms" couldn't even dream of. Is it wise to allow such a company to operate in the US?
Secondly, what are the laws about private organizations promoting candidates? If TikTok wants to promote a candidate they should follow those laws. If they obey the laws, that should be fine. If they don't, they should be punished according to those existing laws. If the laws aren't restrictive enough, the laws should be changed.
> We're literally talking about a company which ... can _easily_ swing the elections in ways the alleged "Russian troll farms" couldn't even dream of.
If you have actual evidence that shows that's what they're doing, please feel free to present it. I'm generally wary of anything connected or potentially connected to the Chinese government, but I think we should have at least some baseline evidentiary standards.
It's possible that Trump does have evidence of this, and if that's the case, I'd (for once) stand behind what he's doing. But the CIA at least claims they have been unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing.
Are you implying that presidential elections have any effects on foreign policy?That seems unlikely. Source?
Why the past tense? Seems to me like someone is still "sponsoring" racial tensions in the US. This has been in the works for quite some time, and it's paying dividends now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPsKvG6WMI. The entirety of the US media apparatus, as well as the entirety of the political establishment is happy to play along.
Because the Mueller report did not contain any information from the future as far as I am aware. :)
But yes, I don’t think we have any reason to believe that Russia is acting any differently today.
>The article stated that the U.S. has known that the staff members at the consulate were conducting suspicious activities, but, for a while, it did not take any action. The Second Department of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is the PLA’s intelligence unit, sent staff members from a large network company, with fake IDs, to China’s Consulate in Houston. Those technicians used a large video platform’s backend data to identify people who might participate in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and ANTIFA’s protests and then created and sent them customized videos on how to organize riots and how to do promotions.
>The purpose was to “weaponize” big data technology. It delivered relevant materials precisely to those people who were most likely to participate in the protests, while other people could not even find those videos.
>RFA did not spell out the company names. A Twitter account said the technicians were from Huawei and the video platform they used to identify candidates and push videos to was TikTok.
http://chinascope.org/archives/24225?doing_wp_cron=159809560...
World needs to reciprocate to China in like India did recently. If China is a closed garden with entry gates controlling the inflow into China, World needs to build exit gates controlling the outflow from China. No other justification is required.
Your point of view---responding to a perceived "threat" by abandoning our principles and freedoms---is why Bin Laden and the terrorists won 9/11.
How responding back by blocking companies is tyranny? Who had oppressed if TikTok it's blocked?
> is why Bin Laden and the terrorists won 9/11
How ??
Millions of Americans who use TikTok. Thousands of Americans who work at TikTok. American investors in ByteDance.
And, when anyone's rights are violated, everyone's rights are violated.
> is why Bin Laden and the terrorists won 9/11
Massive curtailment of freedom and massive growth of the police state in the aftermath of 9/11. This has caused far more harm to Americans than the attack itself. Bin Laden achieved what he wanted, which was to cripple our freedom and cause us to lose confidence in ourselves.
And I do believe the authoritarianism it's a kind of protectionism, a strategy that allows them to grow economically and politically while defending from foreign intervention, and find likely that they will reduce the authoritarian policy to US levels if they achieve the kind of hegemony that US has... But I might be wrong. So there's real danger.
WoW, lots of angry words. West has its problems but they don't compare to China. But to the current point if Google is restricted in China why should TikTok have free reign ?
And to elaborate on threat to the world:
1. Who caused current pandemic and why?
2. How many died in Wuhan any why there is no honest disclose despite entire world suffering?
3. Why China is engaged in border conflict with every single neighbor on some pretext or other?
4. How do you justify oppressive social credit system?
2. I cannot believe you're arguing mishandling of the pandemic => threat to the world when we can all see that Western countries are struggling so much more to muster a proper response. China is open again.
3. How much prosperity and development did the US cost South America? Vietnam? Iraq? How do border squabbles compare to the damage the UK inflicted on India?
4. This is a threat to the world..how? And we've arrived at the same place with credit rating, social pressure, woke culture, so what do I care whether it's the government imposing it or the people?
> West has its problems but they don't compare to China
You don't get to just assert this as an obvious truth. It's decidedly non-obvious to anyone not drunk on Western Kool-Aid. My position is that they are closer than you think, and that you prefer the West because you are part of the West. Which is understandable - but let's drop the pretenses.
3. How Western imprelism are a justification for Chinese incursions into their neighbor's territories? How exactly China is going to bring development by accquiring territories of neighbors?
4. They aren't comparable. In China you just vanish the moment like the Wuhan Whistle blowers vanished.
I understand you love CCP so good luck.
But to the current point if Google is restricted in China why should TikTok have free reign ?
And to elaborate on threat to the world:
1. Who caused current pandemic and why?
2. How many died in Wuhan any why there is no honest disclose despite entire world suffering?
3. Why China is engaged in border conflict with every single neighbor on some pretext or other?
4. How do you justify oppressive social credit system?