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Comment by yibg | Hacker News Reader

Let’s not pretend this is anything other than just plain old geopolitics with TikTok caught in the middle.

Going by “national security” reasons most countries should ban Facebook and google, not to mention amazon, Microsoft, oracle, Cisco etc. since the us government has already shown willingness and ability to spy on anything they can get their hands on, including foreign heads of state. Allowing US controlled social media and other tech companies is a huge risk.

Of course power doesn’t balance that way so they don’t.

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Many countries including China do block US companies on national security grounds. National security is very much a double edged sword.

Of course the US isn’t the only country that plays this game. The government also needs to justify it some how, and I don’t even blame them for that. But at least here we can stop pretending there is some sort of objective, consistently applied standard at play.

US companies operating in China need to follow Chinese laws, including those on censorship. Google etc are blocked because they are hosted outside China, and are not willing to cooperate in China.

What I find bizarre about the Tiktok ban is that they are being banned essentially on executive whim: as far as I can tell, there are no concrete allegations, much less evidence, that they're violating any US laws.

So, it's ok for China to ban Google because Google refuses to help with censorship and propaganda, and because Google doesn't want the Chinese govt to be able to spy on its citizens.

But it's not OK for the US to keep out spyware. Heck, retaliation for China's banning of Google etc would be sufficient justification for banning TikTok on its own.

You cannot say "A" is evil because it does "X", so we will also do "X" and then still claim "A" is evil without saying you are evil yourself.

What you are saying is that unless PRC becomes like the US, the US has to become like PRC. I'm amazed how this is not clear to anyone following this. The only way to go forward and not become what you are pointing fingers at is taking the high road. The US is clearly not doing so.

If we retaliate against every country that has disallowed something that is allowed in America, we're going to run out of imports very quickly.

Oh but it is ok, it's just that there's no good legal precedence for it yet.

Plus it goes against the US's low restrictions and limitations on doing business.

It’s obviously not okay for China to ban Google. That’s why China gets criticized for it constantly, by both the west and its own citizens.

If US wants to retaliate China by becoming more China, well, surely China isn’t the only one getting hurt.

Yes. It's the same situation as 'retaliating' to tariffs with tariffs of your own.

It's like butting your head against the wall to teach the other fellow not to but his own head against the wall.

Well yes it is ok for China to block Google, they’re allowed to block anyone they want.

The issue isn’t a tit-for-tat they block, we block issue, with the US and China acting like playground children.

The issue is whether or not the rule-of-law still means anything in the US. Have the executive block things pretty much arbitrarily undermines the rule-of-law.

If the US wants to block Chinese companies, then pass laws in congress to do so. Don’t let your executive do an end run around your democratic process.

And, of course, people are still free to voice their disapproval with actions of their government (whether by law or by executive fiat) they don't approve of.

That's independent of the rule of law being preferable to the alternative.

The rule of law itself doesn't put much of a constraint on what the government can do, it just requires proper form.

>> Have the executive block things pretty much arbitrarily undermines the rule-of-law ... If the US wants to block Chinese companies, then pass laws in congress to do so...

That's not how the rule-of-law works. The bill of attainder doesn't allow the US gov't to punish an entity (or a group of) arbitrarily by legislating.

The legislative and executive branches have already been briefed on privacy and/or security threat Tiktok poses to US. The US senate already passed a bill to ban federal employees from using Tiktok on gov't issued devices, which is exactly what the legislative is supposed to be doing without overreaching and impinging on Americans' civil liberty, and Trump in turn issued executive orders to deter national security/privacy threats from foreign entities. The judicial branch likewise appropriately exercised their power by delaying Trump's EO and challenging his authority.

That's precisely how the rule-of-law is supposed to work in the US -- there is nothing novel or arbitrary here.

>The issue is whether or not the rule-of-law still means anything in the US. Have the executive block things pretty much arbitrarily undermines the rule-of-law. If the US wants to block Chinese companies, then pass laws in congress to do so. Don’t let your executive do an end run around your democratic process.

The courts are doing exactly that, determining whether the executive has the authority to implement this. This is in fact the rule-of-law in action.

This is also the reason why the rule-of-law is lacking in China, the courts rarely if ever finds against the government in constitutional matters like these. Their system was designed for the CCP to retain power.

For that it has to be established that TikTok is some type of malicious spyware to the satisfaction of US courts and legal system, which hasn't been done.

You are equating the US government with China's. Those governments are supposed to work differently.

I read a bit about that. The claim that Google was blocked due to unwillingness to follow Chinese laws isn't true.

Be noted that China is not a country under rule of law.

When Google was blocked, there was no primary legislation stipulating that online content shall be censored in whatsoever way. There were vague administrative rules (secondary legislation) with questionable applicability. Today, there is only one piece of primary legislation with a section on online censorship in China, but this section targets ISPs only, not content providers.

EDIT2: corrections

Do you honestly believe that geopolitics don’t play a role in China banning US tech companies? You think China would allow Google if it censored search results?

Of course they play a role, and those same Chinese laws also dictate that any foreign IT company needs to have a local partner. But in the unlikely event of Google agreeing to a JV that cedes enough power to a local company, then sure, why not? That's how eg. AWS China operates: https://www.amazonaws.cn/en/about-aws/china/

FWIW, Google already has a substantial presence in China, but they don't target consumers there.

Google search is not available to consumers, but Google Ads are, and they definitely target any eyeballs they can. Of course most Chinese websites don't use Google for their ads, but when a Chinese user visits a foreign website that does, Google controls what they'll be seeing. And to be allowed to keep doing that, Google censors the ads they show: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-vpn-ads-in-china/

That's not how the law works at all. The actual issue is data collection in China meaning data collected in China must be stored in China. Foreign tech companies just choose to have a local partner to avoid direct liability.

I work at a French software company in Shanghai (outside any pilot zone fwiw) and we don't have or need a local partner. Our software is on-prem so data storage is not an issue.

China allows Bing after it censored its content.

You know that Google used to operate in China until 2010 where it voluntarily* quit Chinese market?

* In a sense that Google didn't want to follow Chinese laws anymore.

>> ... being banned essentially on executive whim:

The US Senate unanimously approved a bill banning federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices last month. So there is some consensus among lawmakers that some sort of privacy and/or security threat exists -- it's hardly on "executive whim."

You're tautologically correct (TikTok is banned because TikTok is banned!), but that still doesn't answer the question. Put another way: if whatever Tiktok is doing represents a categorical privacy/security threat, then why aren't they banning all apps that engage in said activity, instead of just Tiktok?

I suspect the answer is that Tiktok is just doing the same as Facebook etc, and that's unacceptable only because the mined data might go to China.

It is quite likely the US will continue to look at companies on which CCP can have control over. I agree it is odd to not have made a more comprehensive list.

Those two examples are fundamentally different and it’s silly to conflate individual action with coercing the app stores to discontinue supporting the app.

The US could tailor laws that would have the same effect, but would that actually change the situation?

As an example, they could make it illegal for all video hosting companies operating in the US to censor videos on Taiwan, Tienanmen and Tibet.

> As an example, they could make it illegal for all video hosting companies operating in the US to censor videos on Taiwan, Tienanmen and Tibet.

Which would probably run afoul of the first amendment. Freedom of speech requires freedom to refrain from speech.

They could define it as discrimination against people from Taiwan and Tibet. It looks very similar to discrimination based on national origin, especially if the company does not recognize the nation sovereignty.

But even if that would fail, I am sure that a team full of lawyer could find something which would be incompatible with Chinese law.

If Bytedance was violating U.S. laws a “ban” would not be necessary to prevent them from continuing to do so. The executive order is based on a concrete factual assertion: “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” [1]. The injunction we are discussing results from a challenge to that assertion.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...

> Going by “national security” reasons most countries should ban Facebook and google, not to mention amazon, Microsoft, oracle, Cisco etc. since the us government has already shown willingness and ability to spy on anything they can get their hands on, including foreign heads of state. Allowing US controlled social media and other tech companies is a huge risk.

Yes.

As a European, I believe in Europe (and in the rest of the world) we should definitively ban most US tech be it for ethical reasons or national security. Same for China.

EU Politicians don't seem to understand the situation yet, but given the current technological cold war happening, I hope we'll wake up soon and switch either to open tech or at least to our own local tech.

I think this the key issue against National Security. The US has used its tech to spy on everybody else and and using Trump logic nobody should use it. Free trade is over

China's tech could also be used, but I am not a Trump supporter. I would be more afraid of Trump facist controlled NSA backdoors monitoring me than CCP seeing my dance moves

Yes.

The immediate security issues are more with WeChat but TikTok gives them a social graph of Western youth documenting their foibles. These are all prospects for future moles when they get jobs in sensitive positions.

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