Judge Blocks US Attempts to Ban WeChat | Hacker News Reader

Judge Blocks US Attempts to Ban WeChat

bbc.com

79 pointsDarkContinent56 comments

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24534610

> Judge Beeler, sitting in San Francisco, noted that "while the general evidence about the threat to national security related to China (regarding technology and mobile technology) is considerable, the specific evidence about WeChat is modest".

I understand the presidential prerogative for national security. I also understand it’s the judges who get to check said authority.

In this case it’s pretty interesting. The judge admits there is evidence, but not overwhelming so limits authority over wechat. However, we know (for a fact) China effectively forces every one of its citizens (and visitors) on wechat[1]. Honestly, the evidence is probably more solid for wechat there than other apps.

Personally, I bet this wasn’t explicitly based on just evidence. Wechat is also the only way many Chinese communicate with family members back home, transfer funds, etc. I suspect it’s also the damage it’ll cause.

In any case, I suspect this will be overturned as spying on communications by a foreign power IS a big security risk. Further, particularly with wechat, it seems like a way to capture communications of other people (who don’t use the app, but message people who do).

[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/wechat-spying-on-foreig...

Is there evidence of wechat spying on communication from the US? I understand “it makes sense”, but I’ve never heard anything provable.

Given the fact that all data in WeChat is sent to a company in China, how would we be able to get concrete evidence of it?

For all we know Iraq is not allowing investigator in, how would we know if they don't have WMDs?

Everyone is guilty until proven innocent.

Here are a couple of past submissions that talk about how WeChat implements moderation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085915

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20502727

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20448103

WeChat is actively censored for both Chinese-registered and non-China-registered accounts, thus implying that communication through the platform is monitored, reviewed, etc. It isn't a far leap to say those capabilities are usable for spying and it seems unlikely that they wouldn't be if an opportunity arose.

You can read some thorough investigations into the extent and mechanics of the censorship here: https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/ or here https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/wechat-surveillance-explained/

Chinese people know they are being spied on. Americans think they aren’t, and our government is still trying to maintain some pretense in that department by trying to “protect” us from mass surveillance when the trend domestically is clearly moving towards that.

Given Facebook messenger isn’t encrypted and Instagram DMs are known to be filtered based on content, that means facebook effectively reads and acts on private messages. The US government is just one National Security Letter away from spying on private comms.

The only real protection we have isn’t this Trump administration WeChat ban... it’s end to end encryption like in iMessage or Whatsapp.

another take:

A judge, in a city that is the stronghold of the party that is opposing the current administration, admits the national security threat, but thinks the threat is modest.

A judge who is apparently not familiar with Chinese government threatening overseas Uighurs, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/08/ch... and https://thehill.com/opinion/international/501008-beyond-xinj... and overseas Chinese critics https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wray/china-coer.... And couldn't bother to notice the recent Chinese government's desire to control private companies https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/business/china-communist-.... A judge who didn't bother to google before ruling on an extremely important National security issue.

A judge that IMO, has overstepped her bound.

While those things are bad it seems somewhat tangential to threaten to ban an app unless the company behind it has its US offices nationalized.

If the national security concerns are significant you’d expect the administration to be working with the legislature to enact laws against such behavior which they could then enforce. Why wouldn’t they want this ability to go after other bad-actors instead of using this bizarre method to target this individual?

I think you're thinking of tiktok. This administration just wants to ban wechat outright.

> A judge, in a city that is the stronghold of the party that is opposing the current administration [...]

How is this relevant?

That this is a politically motivated judgemenet

Based on what evidence?

So everyone living in California is, absent of any evidence, automatically assumed to be a political enemy of the Trump administration?

IMO this is one of the most damaging effects of the electoral college. There are plenty of Republicans in California (particularly once you leave the cities) and a whole lot of people who aren’t really politically anything and might not even vote, but it’s a “blue state” so any nuance is lost.

That is a downright terrifying take - it implies literally any rejection is invalid if from an opposing political party without so much as a sketchy claim to a conflict of interest and implies absolute power with no checks as the "rightful state".

It's not.

Where a federal court sits has almost no bearing on its membership, especially since the long-standing tradition of Presidential collaboration with home-state senators in appointing federal district court judges started eroding in favor of ideological tests starting about with the Reagan Administration.

The media typically reinforces misunderstanding of this by referring to federal courts (both district and appellate) as courts of the city in which they are headquartered, frequently referring to eaxh the US District Court for the Northern District of California and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as a “San Francisco court.”

I think you're misreading the quote. What it suggests is you can absolutely ban WeChat for being connected the behavior you describe, but you need to bring evidence to show that connection.

It's not about politics, or national security, but following a logical, fact-based process.

So the US government obviously has alot more info than me, and probably submitted direct evidence of the Chinese government controlling wechat and applying threats/ban/disappearance to the ovesea wechat users and their families in China.

And the judge looks at the fact that Chinese government, of which Pompeo just gave a speech on the future conflict between freedom and dictatorship, controls a crucial communication tool used by Chinese-born and American citizens in US and said the threat was....'modest'.

> probably submitted direct evidence of the Chinese government controlling wechat and applying threats/ban/disappearance to the ovesea wechat users and their families in China

Yeah right. "Probably" didn't work out so well for Iraq, did it?

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest all of Google, Facebook, Oracle, Amazon, Apple's etc. data end up with the NSA.

Should Europe ban all U.S. tech companies based on that?

Given the U.S. is known for "extraordinary renditions", there's reason this data will be misused.

> Should Europe ban all U.S. tech companies based on that?

That is the logical next step if WeChat is considered a such a danger.

That's your first problem, assuming there is some sort of reciprocal logic at play here.

It's simply about power - we ban things because we can, and we judge the blowback as being not as bad as the alternative.

The ones that care probably get that data from those companies or from the NSA anyways. However, if each country actually did try to play this game the US currently is with TikTok/WeChat/China, we’d either have no global companies, or all of our data would be shared between any company and the country that requests it.

I don't think you understand, this is geopolitics. This is the clash of ideologies. This is democracies vs dictatorships. This is market economy vs state controlled industries. This is EU, US, Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, Taiwan, India, South Korea vs China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, North Korea.

Those that say EU will side with China and go against US, don't know how geopolitics work. And haven't been paying attention to Europe standing up to China these past few weeks.

Why not? The US sure as hell hasn't sided with democracies give the long list of propped up dictators (although said dictators are treated very disposably). Realpolitik has a long history of holding above whatever affinity "is supposed to" happen like Christian kings allying with distant Sultans and declaring war on their neighbors. Stalinists paid far more attention to Trotskyists than any strain of capitalists. Ideology while it may introduce some irrationalities tends to be a tool of the state instead of the state being a tool of the ideology.

> The US sure as hell hasn't sided with democracies give the long list of propped up

So now NATO doesn’t exist. Because geopolitics is complicated and there aren’t always good decisions to be made. And sometimes helping the enemy of your enemy makes sense, even if they’re still your enemy.

NATO also included dictatorships in its membership. Greece has been a member since 1954. It wasn't pure democracy and was more. The point is they don't always side with democracies not that thet always side with them or against them. "Locality and rivalry" have more to do with than nominal stance although some may be correlated with unfriendly actions like how nations which go communist tend to repeatably have the pattern of expropriating foreign owned and getting embargoed in response.

Essentially automatic "claimed affinity alliances" based upon any shared characteristic never work out in the absolute in practice be it race, bloodline, class, or mode of government.

So what exactly is your point? None of what you’ve said explains why the EU would ever align with China over the US. You just wanted to nitpick?

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there is sufficient evidence that all deep states collect information from one another. China, Israel, Russia, U.S. included.

While I am sympathetic to how many people use WeChat to communicate with family members bank home, etc., I am a greater champion of U.S. due process, which is what we see here.

China protects its domestic companies by outright banning Google, Facebook, Twitter. Then it unilaterally censors anything critical to Hong Kong, Uyghurs or its central government.

In basic strategy, one should at least play tit for tat.

I can't wait for the next Stratechery post where Ben Thompson decries EU regulation against American business but five minutes later justifies US actions against Wechat.

The general cognitive dissonance from American commentators is astounding. If the rest of the world would treat US business with the suspicion that the US treats Chinese business American companies wouldn't operate anywhere.

It's not cognitive dissonance, it's pragmatic geopolitics. We can talk about ideals all we want, but the real world is a matter of power and leverage. China is rapidly gaining power and is on a path to usurp the West. This is part of an attempt to slow that at least so that the transition isn't rapid and traumatic.

That was a bad take in the Cold War, a bad take for Japan and a bad take now. It is a bogeyman of bad extrapolation to justify a power grab for the sake of it. Said actions will cause damage and won't actually and the unsustainable growth will be met with a collapse when reality comes knocking.

The Soviet Union collapsed, so to just say with no explanation that it's a bad take doesn't add much.

In what situation would banning a Chinese social media app hurt America?

Wait until all the tech enthusiasts support this but also get mad at any level of censorship that impacts them.

Fuck this authoritarian bullshit. We SHOULD be better than this.

ROTW doesn’t treat US businesses like US treats Chinese businesses because the profit vs risk calculation is skewed in favor of profit. It’s the same reason why African countries, with some limited hesitations, are doing business with China.

It’s not cognitive dissonance. It’s advocacy of self interest. The world is not a fair place, where everyone does what’s best for everyone else and reason rules the day. Policy is driven by profit and fear.

At least in those countries you are allowed to choose another IM platform if you consider all those as privacy-deficient. In China, you do not have that "luxury".

This is what makes WeChat so dangerous, and also the only way of reaching Chinese citizens and transfer them money for an expat.

Which evidence?

The difference between Chinese people and Americans (with regards to social media and comms) is that they know they are being watched. The US government is being cute trying to “protect” Americans from being watched.

Even if you agree that China needs to be checked in its aggressive use of technology for state purposes (which I partly agree with, but not without saying that the US is not innocent of that activity either), at least let's not be naive about it.

Don't think that the banning of apps was a well-reasoned decision with careful justification about the causes, potential, solutions, and impacts on US economics and society. It was a guy asking "what can we do to create some leverage over this adversary I don't like? (and was just told about yesterday)"

Don't deceive yourself that this is some step in a principled fight. If it were that, we'd have slapped tariffs/embargoes and more on Russia a couple of years ago. We'd be implementing measures against Venezuela, Myanmar, North Korea, a whole host of countries doing similar or worse. I haven't heard a peep about those.

It's not good when government operates on a whim. The same hammer may swing against you next time, with equally poor justification, which you created support for.

Don't deceive yourself about what principle (and person) you're getting behind.

Uh, what?

> Don't deceive yourself that this is some step in a principled fight. If it were that, we'd have slapped tariffs/embargoes and more on Russia a couple of years ago. We'd be implementing measures against Venezuela, Myanmar, North Korea, a whole host of countries doing similar or worse. I haven't heard a peep about those.

We have been doing that. It has been widely covered by every major media outlet in the West for years, including: NY Times, Washington Post, Reuters, AP, BBC, NPR, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, Sky News, Bloomberg, and on it goes.

There is a massive US economic blockade effort against North Korea, and the North Koreans have been flipping out about it 24/7 for years. It has been in the news non-stop for years in relation to North Korea. The US has been routinely conflicting with China about maintaining their side of the enforcement related to that effort.

In fact, the US economic blockade of North Korea has caused so much damage to their country, it has prompted cannibalism inside of North Korea and at times risked mass famine.

If anything the US should probably consider backing off its extreme blockade of North Korea, rather than risk pushing them into actual widespread famine, given their instability and nuclear weapons.

The US has crushed the Iranian economy with its economic blockade on them, reducing oil exports by 80-90%. It sent inflation skyrocketing and prompted mass civilian revolt, which then prompted the Iranian Government to murder thousands of protestors in 2019.

The US has recently come close to military conflict to enforce its economic blockade against Venezuela and its energy industry. The US economic blockade of Venezuela has destroyed their energy industry, bringing their energy exports to barely a trickle. That also has been very widely in the news.

And the US has heavily sanctioned Russia, along with going very far out of its way to try to harm Russia's energy interests, eg by trying to stop Nord Stream 2. In fact the US has been borderline belligerent on that matter, coming close to pissing off its European allies in the process.

Setting aside issues of morality and law, these actions taken by the US Gov are bound to cause blowback. It would seem that you cannot intervene and not also eventually experience negative and unintended consequences.

Doing nothing to counter China is even stupider.

Most likely, yes. But we don't live in a consequence-free world. Actions have reactions. Is the US playing checkers or chess?

Looks like you have no clue Of foreign relations. US has sanctions on both countries and individuals/leaders of certain countries.

That, can applies to companies as well.

I am Albanian, and I know the US has sanctioned 17 former gov. Officials that were insanely corrupt and that even their families can’t enter Or do burins in the US. this was a Obama era law.

This is not about state control of technology in that sense, that’s just a propaganda line intended for people who can’t understand the economic stakes. All the politicians who want massive expansion of US government surveillance also support getting “tougher on China”, after all. This app fight is primarily about punishing China for keeping US apps out of their market for reasons that at this point should be understood as purely protectionist (after all, Facebook and Google are on the record as willing to give up every “principle” they claim to have if they can get into China, yet China won’t take the deal). So the US has decided to play the same game as China and force foreign software companies to set up local operations with politically favored partners, like major Republican Party donor Oracle, which keeps more profits here, encourages them to work with US companies instead of Chinese ones to support their US operations, and can also ensure our local tech industry doesn’t fall to far behind in any area the government deems to be important.

Its funny how US acts innocent while Facebook is caught everyday doing shady stuff and google literally sniffs data out of majority of Androids and both of them have connections with Military of US.

You're comparing the actions of a company against the actions of a state. If the US was actively influencing facebook to show anti-lgbt, anti-blm, and anti-usa messaging then I could see the comparison better.

I'm wondering how principled network security between two large nations that distrust each other would even work? Let's say the US and Soviet Union on an alternate timeline.

It seems like they would have separate industries for building hardware and wouldn't allow code to be shipped across the border without a security review.

Ban google too

China already does that..

Hawaii?

[Edit: Apologies, I got We Chat and Tik Tok confused...]

What seems outrageous to me is that this seems like simple retribution for Tik Tok users getting one over on the president [1].

So then Tik Tok tries to find a US partner, and actively searches for a Trump-supporting company, finding a partner in Oracle [2].

This seems like a corrosive use of power, an exercise in vindictive narcissism.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/21/trump-tulsa-... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/19/21437850/president-trump-...

> This seems like a corrosive use of power, an exercise in vindictive narcissism.

what you can expect from trump.

> What seems outrageous to me is that this seems like simple retribution for Tik Tok users getting one over on the president [1].

We've been here before haven't we? [0] [1] [2] [3]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/us-to-investigate-tiktok-ove...

[1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19273614/2...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/technology/tiktok-nationa...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

That whole narrative about people on TikTok disrupting the rally isn't true. They were giving out tickets to anyone who asked - 80k tickets were given out to a venue with a seating capacity of ~5k. At no point did they stop giving out tickets because they had reached capacity.

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