Comment by jonathannat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonathannat | Hacker News Reader

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another take:

> 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".

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.

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?

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

How is this relevant?

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.”

That this is a politically motivated judgemenet

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".

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.

Based on what evidence?

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.

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