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Comment by metadat | Hacker News Reader

Why should the government be able to control which apps people in the United States install and use on their own personal phones? What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"? Are they going to ban particular websites next? And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? Is China going to simultaneously track what Walmarts users shop at and implant Manchurian Candidate messages into the users brains? At best, this is an extreme and short-sighted proposal. Political posturing, wasting time and attention while solving no real problem.

What an uncomfortably Orwellian move.

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This is one reason I hate locked down hardware like iDevices, and the whole App store model. If there were not these central points of control such a thing would infeasible to implement. Banning a company like Apple from distributing an App on their app store effectively bans it.

Like you can't install any software on iPhone that has not been "blessed" (aka signed) by one Apple's private keys. Well unless you find an exploit to free the device from their control. What is so crazy about this is Apple does not even own the hardware after they sell it, but they won't let you disable signing in the boot ROM or at the OS level. If it were about security they would at least let you load your own signing keys. It's not though in my opinion it's about control. I even consider it a violation of property rights.

This is simply because if you own something you should be able have full enjoyment of your property without interference. Further, one major fundamental aspect of owning tangible property is the right of exclusion. The cryptographic system Apple has setup allows Apple to control the right of exclusion when it comes to deciding what software the CPU will and will not run. Apple is effectively reserving the right of exclusion regarding what CPU can execute via cryptography. Crucially, when something is sold legally this means all property rights are transferred to the buyer with few exceptions. One being copyright the original holder of the intangible property reserves/retains the right to copy/reproduce. Despite not legally having the right of exclusion Apple decides what can be excluded from running on other peoples hardware even after selling it.

The short and simple is I should be able to decide what to include or exclude from something I own. In this case, one must ask Apple first which shows how your right of exclusion has been infringed.

This also applies to other devices not just iDevices, but anything with locked down boot ROMs/loaders, but Apple is well known for their "walled garden" (I don't like this term nothing garden like about property right violations).

As for tik tok it's an easy target for such government overreach.

> Why should the government be able to control which apps people install and use on their own personal phones?

The theoretical argument will be national security and “protect the children”.

> What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"?

Flies out the door for the causes mentioned above. Reasonable? No. Reality? Yes.

> Are they going to ban particular websites next?

This already happens at some levels. Note that The Guardian website was not accessible on DoD computers during the Snowden revelations. There was a practical reason (mass spillage is a PITA for folks who diligently report and process the reports of such things), but it was also a futile exercise of control.

> And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat?

1. Lots and lots of tracking data.

2. Lots and lots of real time on-the-ground info.

3. The ability to shape the discourse and mood within certain groups via the algo (assuming that the algo can be influenced by the PRC government, which folks widely believe it can).

You may not believe these things are significant, but I encourage you to chat up some sigint (esp. analysts) and psyops folks to see what they have to say about this type of data and medium.

I don't mind if a site or app isn't visible on "company" computers/hardware. It's not yours. Same as a bus driver taking the bus home for the night and driving around his mates.

BUT

I wonder how the sigint would feel about having their bug/issue tracking software open to a foreign governments alterations? If they have an issue with it, they need to stop using Jira.

> At best, this is an extreme and short-sighted proposal. Political posturing, wasting time and attention while solving no real problem

It helps Meta and Google, to gain back U.S. social media market share. Which is why Meta has been lobbying for it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...

If Meta can't compete because their Facebook platform is so toxic know one wants to use it isn't the vaunted hand of the free market where users and advertisers have spoken with their wallets. why should we subsidies their bottom line by killing alternative.

> What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"?

The first Red Scare. Eugene Debs was imprisoned for opposing WW1.

But the US has only ever been in favour of free trade when it benefits them, they did similar things with tariffs against Japan in the late 1980s, have blown up the Nordstream pipelines, etc.

Every intelligence agency has said that Russia most likely destroyed the pipeline. Russia claims they didn't.

Western intelligence agencies claimed Russia was going to start a war with Ukraine. Russia also claimed they wouldn't start a war with Ukraine.

I know who I'm going to trust with the current evidence presented.

You might want to check that intelligence - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-p...

"Blew up the Norstream pipelines"...If you say it often enough, it gets truthy

>US has only ever been in favour of free trade when it benefits them

Except there is no freedom of investment in China right now. All US corporations are being forced to minority shares and joint ventures with government entities, not to mention Entertainment (movies, games) and Internet companies are outright banned from that market altogether.

>did similar things with tariffs against Japan in the late 1980s

Japan did exactly the same thing China does today. Foreign currency quota and ownership limits "MITI'S SUCCESSES AND FAILURES IN CONTROLLING JAPAN'S TECHNOLOGY IMPORTS" https://www.jstor.org/stable/43294946 And it worked wonderfully for them.

Frontline: Coming From Japan [The Fall Of The US Television Industry] (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aesJTsZqm6c

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/09/30/j...

"JAPAN AND THE BIG SQUEEZE September 30, 1990. HOW DID Japan destroy the American television industry? The secret history of that strategy reveals how Japanese manufacturers and the Japanese government first created an anti-competitive cartel ..."

"Japan's raid on the American market dates back to 1956, when the largest Japanese manufacturers formed the Home Electronic Appliance Market Stabilization Council, an illegal production cartel. The intent of the cartel was to monopolize the domestic market for television receivers, radios and other home electric products and to exclude foreign imports. Once their home market was secure, they would launch a drive against the far richer American market."

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-04-23-870131...

"TARIFFS WON`T AFFECT MOST JAPANESE TV SETS Apr 23, 1987 The new tariffs on Japanese color televisions will have little or no effect on the U.S. market, because most sets are exempt."

I get your point but an unparalleled spyware tool being deployed by an adversarial, authoritarian nation on our largely unsuspecting populous is something the government should intervene over. Perhaps we would never see this support were it not for lobbying efforts by the likes of Meta, or a looming cold war with China, but that doesn't mean the move itself is a short-sighted proposal.

People should have the freedom to run whatever software they choose. That does not mean the government should allow a country like China to operate within the US. And of course spying done by Meta is a whole different conversation.

> unparalleled spyware tool

Google Analytics? Facebook, via Facebook buttons? Or the Facebook app known for accessing private data from exploits?

I don't see how TikTok is any worse than US Big Tech.

> And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat?

Competition for US-based companies.

The US tech companies are psychologically weaponised platforms, in my experience TikTok isnt.

There are already a lot of websites that get taken down for violating the law, do you consider that Orwellian?

Depending on the law, yes. Passing a law to silence your critics or your competition is absolutely Orwellian. It's no different than burning/banning books because they contradict the ideology of those in power. It's the establishment of the Ministry of Truth to determine what is and what is not acceptable for the peasants to know. At it's core it is the suppression of the free exchange of ideas.

Now, an orderly society cannot have an absolute freedom of speech in all facets, but a free society should be able to tolerate a significant amount of objectionable speech and tolerate those people who wish to consume that speech.

Ok, so you would agree that governments should censor content in some cases?

Yes in some cases but those should be rare, marginal and not done simply because the content is objectionable.

Many find pornography objectionable but those engaged in it that are of the age and capacity to enter in creating then it should not be censored by the government. Child pornography should be censored because they are not of the age or capacity to understand.

Doesn’t feel a lot different than some European countries banning Google Analytics for violating the GDPR which I’m guessing many of you ‘personal liberty’ folk are on board with.

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