The 'Insanely Broad' Restrict Act Could Ban Much More Than Just TikTok
vice.com
vice.com
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. —C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock
Something along the lines of "unless China gives reciprocal access to all the banned websites listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... then we cannot permit China to have access to US web audiences".
It is unequal and unfair and anticompetitive for China to ban hundreds of US based websites and it simply cannot stand for China to have unfettered access to the US web audience.
These are some of the websites banned in China:
Google Facebook Twitte Instagram YouTube WhatsApp Dropbox The New York TimesThe Washington Post Bloomberg News ReutersThe Wall Street Journal BBC Wikipedia (English version) Twitch Vimeo SoundCloud WordPress.com Tumblr Flickr Medium The Guardian Le Monde Deutsche Welle Radio Free Asia Voice of America GitHub Slack Zoom LinkedIn Snapchat Pinterest Quora Netflix Hulu HBO Disney+ ESPN Microsoft Azure Apple iCloud Steam Reddit Imgur Dailymotion Archive.org Amnesty International Human Rights Watch Reporters Without Borders
Apple and Microsoft does this.
Yes it's a stupid totalitarian law but there's that.
I guess the fair approach would be for the US to require Chinese companies' products to be actively and and preemptively censored by the US government. E.g. require the Global Times to publish editorials praising the US if it wants those editorials to be read in the country. Maybe the US should also pass laws to make forced tech transfers from Chinese companies the norm (I guess arguably that is what the whole "sell Tiktok" is really). Seems fair and reciprocal.
Speech should flow freely, and in order to do so the platforms on which we speak must not be controlled by hostile foreign governments.
But if the global times wants to publish a pro china article in the United States, but they should be more than welcome to.
Nothing there would go against the principles of free trade or even free speech really. China would be free to open up if they want to engage in those activities. But if China didn't want that, then it wouldn't mean that the US is somehow acting rashly or wrong by reciprocating economically.
This is basically a ban, because there is no world that China agrees to let their firewall down.
Or it's effectively nothing if China argues "they just have to follow our rules".
And then you have to implement the actual ban, which will lead to this exact situation all over again.
Free speech is a right of citizens and individuals. Denying China's right to control what Americans say increases freedom of speech.
Whether it's a ban or not is up to China. If they don't want to change policy that's their prerogative.
> And then you have to implement the actual ban, which will lead to this exact situation all over again.
So? Sounds like in that situation it _should_ be banned.
However I also think this plan will prove way more unwieldy and easy to abuse than a more direct and honest ban that makes it clear China has none of our trust and is recognized as a proper hostile state.
It's not unfair for a company from country X to not be able to operate in country Y because the X company does not want to obey the laws that apply to generally all Y companies.
For example it is not unfair that some foreign financial companies cannot operate in the US because they aren't willing to obey US KYC and tax reporting requirements. It's fair because those KYC and tax reporting requirements also apply to US companies.
It's not unfair that some foreign child car seat manufacturers cannot sell in the US because they have not went through the testing required for regulatory approval. US car seat manufacturers have to go through the same approval process.
Wouldn't giving American consumers access to what they want be the fairest of all?
Just because there's a wrong in China with their censorship, doesn't mean that adding another wrong in the US make a right.
I'm not sure how you could argue it wouldn't be fair. The US would only be treating Chinese companies like China treats US companies.
> Wouldn't giving American consumers access to what they want be the fairest of all?
No? Not unless China did likewise. What is your definition of fairness?
> Just because there's a wrong in China with their censorship, doesn't mean that adding another wrong in the US make a right.
How is "wrong" for the US to treat Chinese companies the way US companies are treated in China? These are simply trade agreements. Besides if you think what China is doing is wrong, then I hope you'd understand that the US ignoring it _enables_ that wrong.
By your logic, the US shouldn't ban products produced by slave labor. Do you mean to make that argument? If not, what would be different there?
I'm not quite sure that's the same? As long as the US bans products produced by slave labour regardless of country of origin, there's no problem here.
But in any case: yes, I can bite the bullet on that one, the US doesn't necessarily need to ban products produced by slave labour.
This is a really backwards way of putting it.
Azure defintely operates in China https://www.microsoft.com/china/azure/index-en.html
Twitch works from time to time depends on which unfortunate AWS IP address it streams on.
Zoom isolating China as a standalone market
Apple iCloud has the local version
For Steam, there's a HUGE Chinese player base, but steamcommunity.com is blocked
Some of the websites you mentioned were "collateral damange" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom
Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet (Azure China) is a physically separated instance of cloud services located in China. It's independently operated and transacted by Shanghai Blue Cloud Technology Co., Ltd. ("21Vianet"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Beijing 21Vianet Broadband Data Center Co., Ltd..In fact every book, game, movie is like that. There's always a special standalone CN version.
Just go to Azure or AWS and get a VM.
If US persons are truly helping TikTok engage in espionage then arrest them, it’s already illegal.
Don't the US gov already have the power to arbitrarily sanction and restrict trade with foreign countries? e.g. You cannot sell to nor buy from people in North Korea. Banning all social media platforms from China seem like a vary minor extension of that power.
Whatever "many people already think," though, it's the responsibility of our government to defend the country from adversaries. That should be done in a way thay doesn't undermine the rights of Americans... but it has to be done or those rights would cease to exist.
TikTok harvesting data and manipulating opinion from a foreign throne is incompatible with having a populace free and unencumbered to make wise and rational decisions to self-govern. Without which all other speech disappears.
And it's doubly-ironic because TikTok isn't getting banned because of Chinese messaging (that's already allowed everywhere, in all mediums). TikTok is under ban-threat in the US because Americans are using it for American messaging.
It's not meaningfully different than say, Turkey banning Twitter back in 2014 and such.
I agree, it’s not different than an oppressive regime controlling means of communication. It’s in fact precisely the same.
What they are doing is establishing the platform for a great firewall of America. What’s the difference between this and oppressive regimes blocking western sites? Who decides what’s next? You’re honestly comfortable with filtering the internet?
I think TikTok users would disagree it’s equivalent to making a phone call, or other sites. It has a specific form that fosters their desired mode of communication. I’ve not seen a specific criminal charge leveled against TikTok, so I assume they’re not doing anything illegal. So, I don’t see how this isn’t suppressing the communications of TikTok users based only on the nationality of their parent company. If they did something illegal, then use the justice system to get redress. Use existing regulatory bodies. Etc. I don’t see the need for a broad based framework for censorship. Even if you won’t agree that this isn’t that this time, it’s most certainly the foundation for it next time. Once you give up freedom of expression on the internet for any reason, you give it up for all reasons.
There's a line between extending freedom to parties that don't play fair and being a chump
In fact, I’d say a ban is at least a decade overdue and our Congress is to blame as usual.
Edit: I mean a ban on social media networks controlled by China PR, not a ban on Texas drivers!
Article IV, Section 1:
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-4/sec...
It is not even an amendment. It was there from the start.
Tons of laws from the different states affect each other.
so in my example, there is no Federal carry reciprocity law, so states can clobber each other at will
likewise, there is no Federal Drivers License, so you get some states that share license info with each other, some that don't...and they aren't compelled
Congress did not decide that concealed carry had reciprocity.
The entire "legalizing gay marriage" argument was if states had to be forced to accept same-sex marriages from other states where it was legal.
Why ban trade between consenting adults?
I'd take that offer any day!
I'm not personally against some sort of action in this regard, but would prefer stricter definitions to be applied to avoid abuse of power.
If US social media companies are banned there, their companies should be banned here, etc.
This will also set the stage for even more draconian actions. Obama passing a law allowing for indefinite detention, including of US citizens, without trial or even legal representation [1] would never, in a million years, have been accepted in more sane times. But people lose their mind when the government rallies up enough fear, which is then actively exploited to seize even more powers.
This bill will directly lead to the development of the "Great Firewall of America" as it's the only practical way to engage censorship on the scale that the bill envisages, and it also grants the Secretary endless powers to carry out such. This is a bill is one of the purest embodiments of the absolute decline of America, and everything it, and we, once stood for.
Becoming China is not how you compete against China.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_detention#United_St...
"The most controversial provisions to receive wide attention were contained in subsections 1021–1022 of Title X, Subtitle D, entitled "Counter-Terrorism", authorizing the indefinite military detention of persons the government suspects of involvement in terrorism, including U.S. citizens arrested on American soil.
Although the White House and Senate sponsors maintain that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) already grants presidential authority for indefinite detention, the Act states that Congress "affirms" this authority and makes specific provisions as to the exercise of that authority."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorizati...
AUMF:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Mil...
> Today, the full list of actors the U.S. military is fighting or believes itself authorized to fight under the 2001 AUMF is classified and therefore a secret unknown to the American public.
I don't disagree, but I also don't know what alternative works without weaponizing our own ideals against us. Free speech is wonderful, but, as irrational apes, it can also amplify divisiveness. I worry that the alternative at a technological scale requires a civically engaged and rationally-minded populace, and my optimism is waning. So what do you suggest as a workable alternative?
Or, alternatively, maybe that's the how the veiled power-grab is being framed. But we'd probably still need to undermine that claim about irrationality to offer an alternative.
The talk about controlling the flow of bad information is a naked power grab, and always has been ever since the first governments tried to do it in the ancient era. What history has taught us is that the truth always catches up eventually, and that it is better to provide people with more information than less. I honestly don't think that the social media era has changed that at all, and it would require some very strong evidence that it did (which is completely lacking).
Remember that before Facebook, news/gossip junkies were subscribing to papers and tabloids of varying quality. We have just eliminated the dead trees. The content was just as bad, emotionally-charged, and false, and there were so many of these papers that you could create a Facebook-style information bubble.
It seems like you either need to make the case that:
1) humans aren’t irrational or
2) the risk of such irrationality at scale is not really a major risk or
3) social media isn’t uniquely poised to capitalize on that risk or
4) we already have tools capable of mitigating that risk
It sounds like you’re debating 3) but there seems to be some evidence that social media tends to spread “bad” information faster and farther than “good” information by hijacking innate human psychological traits more easily.
Also, to some degree, 1 is fairly true. You see this in economics, for example, where individuals are generally irrational about their choices, but modeling populations as a whole by treating them as 100% rational individuals gives pretty similar results to real life.
This is exactly the point being made (although I’m not sure I am completely convinced). The analogy could be “people have always killed each other. Nuclear weapons just make it faster to kill lots of people. Hence there no need to ban nuclear weapons.” The idea being there is a tipping point where the scalability of technology outpaces our biologically evolved innate sense to control it.
I agree with #1 but only in some domains. You can see it with guessing the weight of a bull at a fair or the number of jelly beans in a jar. But there’s other examples where it breaks down. In economics we have bubbles that are destructive when corrected. I’m not sure we want that short term extreme volatility in something like governance.
I expect that what those studies really measure is how well social media users align and agree with the researchers
Really? Maybe small lies. But not bigger ones.
"The election was rigged" is a binary statement that should be resolvable. In 2022[1], when asked about the 2020 US election, more than 25% of US citizens polled thought it was rigged. More than 55% thought it was not. (Some were unsure). Certainly it's not "easy to spot" lies in that basic example.
[1] https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/axios-january-6-revis...
So the majority of people seemly are able to discern lies by that data.
Which is a good thing for free speech and democracy.
Suppose 40% of voters think social security should be eliminated, 35% of voters think social security should be saved, and 25% voters vote to save social security because they think lepricons are poisoning babies, and only the social security save party is willing to do something about it.
This would show that social security's future is now now determined by who tells the best lies about lepricons.
Whatever this thing is, I don't think "good" is the right work to describe it.
Regardless if it is in a Democracy, Republic, Monarchy, etc.
Regardless of it's means of resource distribution such as capitalism, communism, socialism, etc.
America for example, despite at times in the past having slavery being legal, committing genocide, segregation, the stealing of land, etc.
Despite being majority one religion.
Still expanded the vote. Expanded freedoms. Expanded access to education. And has shown an ability to let people that were previously expected to hide to live out in the open and freely.
If we are going to really take one survey result at one moment in time as gospel to say that American voters can't be trusted seems counter to the examples of the past where despite majority of Americans voters feeling one way, opinions were changed and progress was made. Slowly. Painfully. Yet still some positive direction.
Thanks for reading my rant and I'll leave with one last thing:
The public trust is sadly a fragile thing. When that trust is abused and poisoned by the very elected officials that have sworn to protect it the voters faith in the system becomes erroded. It unfortunately then takes longer and more work to rebuild that trust again. To move back to a society where arguments were made in good faith; not to just to troll or wage culture wars.
The point I make here is that the issues are more fundamental than e.g. China or Trump or whatever else. We're like flagellants of the ancient times looking to the Heavens for the cause of the plague, while the answer lay somewhat more mundanely on the rats scurrying about their feet. So what IS causing the massive declines in trust? It's no more complex than those fleas, it's the government behaving in an untrustworthy way. The decline started shortly after everything around the assassination of JFK ended up being shrouded in secrecy and lies, which was just the start of a never-ending series of deceitful-looking, if not plainly deceitful, actions.
And now? The en vogue "solution is supposed to be censorship, even more authoritarian levels of social control, and a borderline obsession with making sure people can only access the "right" message, which is little more than a euphemism for propaganda kept at arm's length. Do you genuinely think these sort of things will help improve trust? Look to the countless countries which were able to execute such mechanisms in times of far less externa influence, like the USSR. The government had complete control not only over absolutely all messaging, but even if who could enter or leave the country. And resulted not only in extreme distrust, but a system that predictably collapsed [long] before even reaching its centennial.
Quite simply, if the government wants to regain trust, the best way to do that is to start acting in a transparent and trustworthy fashion. Yet we're going in the exact opposite direction, hard.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust...
As for what's causing divides, the one thing I'd observe is that if it were the internet then we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case. Some Western democracies, such as Norway, are even becoming less divided. They have no censorship whatsoever besides a handful of file-sharing sites being blocked, and universal access to the internet. Beyond this there are so many possible, and completely viable, explanations for the divisions in America that I think it turns into a Rorschach test. It's like trying to explain the fall of Rome.
>we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case.
I'm not sure if this premise holds. For one, I think it's missing the nuance about the size and heterogeneity of the U.S. Take, for example, the thesis that the country is more accurately comprised of multiple different dominant sub-cultures.[1] I think when you expand the other Western democracies similarly, we see analagous divisions (see: Brexit).
[1] https://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244527860/forget-the-50-state...
Does gerrymandering count as rigged?
As far as I can tell, the only unreasonable position is that US elections are always completely and perfectly clean. People commit fraud to win county clerk elections - every more significant position almost certainly has some dirty games.
Gerrymandering has no impact on presidential elections, so it does not count for this survey.
Do not ever limit freedoms of your own citizens under false pretense of "saving the children". As George Carlin said on this particular subject - fuck the children. Rights supposed to be increasing if you are healthy society.
If you do not like China you can kick them out. You already have enough laws an discretions to do so. There will of course be consequences but that's the price.
Or, in the words of Jefferson, "The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation."
That's the claim being made by lawmakers: that certain trade constitutes a threat to national security. I'm not really seeing much debate about that claim.
If I understand your point correctly, you're instead saying we already have the tools to ban TikTok (presumably under commerce laws) and we don't need any other means.
>"the Constitution isn't a suicide pact."
Acknowledged long time ago - do not yell fire in a cinema example.
This proposal is actually substantially worse than the Great Firewall of China. The Chinese government doesn't particularly care if you use VPN's to get around the firewall, because they know that most people won't, and that's enough to meet their main goal, protecting domestic tech companies from competing with established US tech companies. The US is definitely going to be prosecuting individuals for using VPNs to read TeleSUR or whatever, though, because it's about controlling the narrative, not about protecting local industry.
Because when I read the bill, it appears that penalties only apply to covered entities and covered transactions which are fairly narrowly defined, and don't include individuals accessing content. I question whether something like that could pass constitutional muster anyway.
My read of the text of the bill [1] looks like the intent is to grant the secretary of commerce, in partnership with doj, the ability to review, inspect and prohibit equipment and technology that's used in critical infrastructure or impacts nation security (an overly broad term) which are substantially owned by a foreign adversary.
On it's face, that doesn't seem like a bad thing, but I agree that some of the language is too broad. For example, I think it should require congressional review to deem a country a foreign adversary.
There's also concerning language that exempts all of it from judicial review, which I don't understand - is this even possible?
I've been seeing a lot of reporting on this that is inconsistent with the actual text of the bill. It's hard to tease out the truth of the legislation from the partisan flag carrying.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
This means the Secretary of Commerce makes a determination about any entity that "poses an undue or unacceptable risk".
Where "covered holding" can be any non-US entity, or any entity "directed or controlled" by a non-US entity, so essentially, every entity but especially foreign entities.
> (1) IN GENERAL.—A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.
So you might think subsection (a) refers to something really terrible, but actually:
> (a) Unlawful acts.—
> (1) IN GENERAL.—It shall be unlawful for a person to violate, attempt to violate, conspire to violate, or cause a violation of any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under this Act, including any of the unlawful acts described in paragraph (2).
Where "paragraph (2)" goes on to describe every possible technical channel (mobile, LAN, satellite, cable, back-haul networks, etc).
This gives the Secretary of Commerce the ability to say that reading Russian or Chinese news, for example, is unlawful, because it is a risk to national security. If you use a VPN to access that news, you are guilty of this crime.
It seems pretty clear to me.
But if your work involves logging into Alibaba for procurement or if you're a journalist that reads Weibo or something, you might be a felon, should the Secretary of Commerce recommend you to be.
That clause adds a vast amount under the blanket of "covered transactions." At the minimum this would include the usage or offering of VPNs, TOR, or any sort of technology or connection that might be able to circumvent the methods the government will try to use. The "or" in the bill's clause also seems quite meaningful, as it clarifies that offering a service which CAN circumvent the restrictions is just as illegal as offering a service INTENDED to do so.
Beyond that, this thing's a monster of obfuscation. To even begin reading it you need to remove 'weak' OR statements. For one simple example, from Section 3 all the Secretary needs to do to justify 'imposing mitigation measures' against something is to show that it poses an "undue" risk to the "safety of United States persons." The language about national security or critical infrastructure, which you mentioned from the same section, are irrelevant as they're both subsets of 'undue risk to the safety of United States persons.'
You haven't experienced the GFW if you think that's the main goal. Oh, and please try telling your Chinese friends that "the govt doesn't particularly care about VPNs" and listen to what they yell at you.
Try read this 13 years old blog post on what GFW was (at that time): https://gfwrev.blogspot.com/2009/10/gfw.html#:~:text=%E6%95%...
... and revisiting it this time I realized it even recommended a tptacek publication. Didn't realize who this guy is last time I read it.
But this act is not that. I don't support this.
This is the issue with China. One-way trade doesn't work.
20 years in prison for accessing restricted website.
Do we want to erect the Great Wall in the United States? How technically would we achieve this without enabling broad scale censorship? The law isn’t specific about TikTok - which means it opens the door to broad censorship based on political interest if there controlling party. Is sticking a thumb in chinas eye for reducing Google’s EPS by $0.01/share worth that?
Tic Tok has to go, I don’t want people near me using it so China can have a working graph of Americans at all time. They’re already famous for using 0-days in apps. This is just a common sense move I can’t believe any honest tech person would disagree with.
If TikTok were doing anything criminal I would agree. They aren’t. And if they are there’s already methods of dealing with it. The content and medium of communication and forum of TikTok isn’t available anywhere else. I see this as no different than oppressive regimes everywhere banning Wikipedia, FB, etc. I’m shocked any honest tech person can’t see this is establishing a Great Wall in the US.
Unilateral free trade is optimal already. Even without reciprocation.
(Reciprocation is great. But not necessary.)
Can you elaborate on your definition of 'optimal', especially in the context of the law in the article that is trying to address trade that 'poses an unacceptable risk to national security'?
Software/services are different - especially services where the real asset is user profile data.
For example, you probably don’t pick your spouse or decide to have kids based solely on their economic contributions to your life, but are rather trying to optimize across more dimensions, including social considerations.
Consumers benefit from having access to a globally competitive array of products. Including tech products. I wish Chinese consumers could as well, but just because they don't doesn't mean that US consumers should also suffer.
Worked great for nuclear nonproliferation...
I keep seeing this claim posted, and I feel the need to add in some relevant history about why most of the companies on that list aren't doing business in China (tldr; Americans don't want to allow American companies to comply with Chinese laws).
Between the mid and late aughts Google, Facebook, and Twitter were all operating in China. Around this time the Chinese government got very serious about content filtering and imposed new restrictions on what could be shown/uploaded. There was a very strong backlash from the US side that American companies might be helping to build the Great Firewall. Many Americans were outraged and US politicians warned the companies not to build infrastructure that could be used for censorship. So the American companies acquiesced and either left the market or were banned (Twitter).
Reciprocity in trade is important, but it has to be viewed within the context of national laws. American companies had their hands tied and couldn't comply with Chinese law which is why they don't operate anymore. TikTok has so far complied with American laws and spent something on the order of $1 billion USD for a data center in Texas whose only buinsess value was to placate the American government. If enough Americans and lawmakers decide that it's ok for Facebook to build content filters and take down speech critical of the government then there might still be a future for Facebook in China.
We lost fucking habeus corpus with the NDAA that gets renewed every year! How are we doing with the Patriot Act? Is James Clapper in prison yet? Assange is. It never ends.
Assange, like Snowden, revealed all sorts of government and military corruption which was directly enabled by things like the Patriot Act and the NDAA. So how did "his actions" make their effects "so much worse?"
People are still in a struggle over single words or even punctuation in the constitution written by people who had no idea there will be cars or Internet or CCTV cameras or abortion pills or AR-15s in the future.
It is not about whether we want or don't want TikTok. It is obviously bad and there is absolutely no good coming out of it. But it is about what other consequences the law will have.
Any law needs to be written thoughtfully and based on principles. Only principles have even a chance to stand the test of time.
arguably untrue. easy to list reasons, however the indomitable one is the breadth of its usage within a free market already qualifies its utility for the masses.
Criminalizing drugs drives producers and users to more potent and compact forms, like opium gave way to heroin which gave way to fentanyl. (Very simplified.)
Opium is bulky.
When the US outlawed alcohol for a while, the market also switched from relatively bulky beer to harder spirits.
---
Aside from that, opium and fentanyl etc obviously have some good aspects, otherwise people wouldn't take them. Duh.
That doesn't mean that the good aspects outweigh the bad aspects in someone else's opinion.
Military coups are invariably authoritarian and often motivated this way.
Update: Read the article a bit further and it says they could criminalize the use of VPN. Even here in Russia we don't have this. At least for now)
The US is a bipartisan, democratic system where members of Congress can draft a proposal for a new law and send it to both the Senate and House for voting.
It's a rigorous process with lost of scrutiny and debate.
As a result the majority of bills, 96% of them actually, get killed before they reach the president's desk.
The other 4% become law only after lots of changes and amendments.
So no, nothing remotely similar to what you have in Russia.
This bill criminalizes access to censured foreign media.
> So no, nothing remotely similar to what you have in Russia.
Correct, it's worse. As of 2023, I don't believe people go to prison, (or get disappeared, shoved out of windows, or end up with terminal cases of polonium poisoning) for reading in Russia.
That wasn’t my reading. It criminalises helping people circumvent the investment limits.
It's a proposal for a law that a small group of lawmakers drafted.
That draft is then reviewed, if it has any merit it goes to the House where needs to be debated, changed and voted, then goes to the Senate to repeat the process, before it can be sent to the president to turn into law.
Some bills are ridiculously bold, that's why very few become law and ZERO of them without lots of amendments.
Bold bills like this one get picked up by the media for obvious reasons, and some people read it like it's an imminent law to be enacted and enforced.
It is important to read them of course and to know who's behind them, because in America we have the opportunity to call our representatives to raise our concerns and complain.
It is not the first bold bill to be drafted and won't be the last one, that's why 96% bills don't go anywhere.
This is how our system works since 1789.
My wife is Russian by the way and grew up in the Soviet Union, so don't be ridiculous saying stuff like this.
> so don't be ridiculous saying stuff like this.
I'll stop saying ridiculous stuff when lawmakers stop putting those ridiculous things into their bills.
I was born and raised in USSR until I left so fucking what? What's the point in bringing your wife's background?
> It's a rigorous process with lost of scrutiny and debate.
Do you also still believe in Santa Claus?
We may suck at using the tools we have available, because americans are apathetic and kinda lazy and often purposely disenfranchised, but the tools are like 80% of the way there.
Are Americans allowed to vote on whether or not to give endless amounts of money to Ukraine?
And on and on
The sad fact is that in the present day United States proposing such a law is not a political suicide.
I’ve read the bill’s text and I’m struggling to see how they’re figuring this.
SEC 11 b (1) "In general.--A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit ... an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both."
So using a VPN to ATTEMPT to bypass these restrictions can incur up to a $1M fine and 20 years in jail.
You just listed two lines that say "it's illegal to try and break this law", but if the unlawful act is "providing" the service it wouldn't lead to the conclusion in your comment about someone using a vpn to try and access tik tok
Definitions:
> (A) IN GENERAL.—The term “covered transaction” means a transaction in which an entity described in subparagraph (B) has any interest (including through an interest in a contract for the provision of the technology or service), or any class of such transactions.
> (17) TRANSACTION.—The term “transaction” means any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and communications technology product or service, including ongoing activities such as managed services, data transmission, software updates, repairs, or the provision of data hosting services, or a class of such transactions.
Note this includes "data transmission" and "use of any information and communications technology product or service." And then the law allows the US to:
(a) In general.—The Secretary, in consultation with the relevant executive department and agency heads, is authorized to and shall take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate, including by negotiating, entering into, or imposing, and enforcing any mitigation measure to address any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the Secretary determines— ... interfering in, or altering the result or reported result of a Federal election ... or otherwise poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety of United States persons.
That's very broad. Note: any risk by any person. Not just by a foreign adversary - this reads to me that if the Secretary of Commerce were to list TikTok on that list of entities, Americans using TikTok services could well fall under fire too. To make it more explicit, in the list of specific unlawful acts:
> No person may engage in any conduct prohibited by or contrary to, or refrain from engaging in any conduct required by any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under this Act.
And the part that makes using a VPN to attempt to evade this itself unlawful:
> No person may engage in any transaction or take any other action with intent to evade the provisions of this Act, or any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued thereunder.
(Remember from above, a "transaction" includes the use of any software, but even aside from that this uses the wording "or take any other action" - so it's even broader.)
And what's the penalty for this? There's a civil penalty which is (a bit) lighter, but let's just cite one of the criminal penalties:
> IN GENERAL.—A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.
So, using a VPN to access TikTok is also a violation. But "aiding or abetting" someone in doing so is also a violation. Would providing a VPN service to access TikTok be considered aiding in this sense? Maybe!
In authoritarianism the single party announces and enforces the new law overnight.
Commenced 23 March 1933
First chamber: Reichstag Passed 23 March 1933
Second chamber: Reichsrat Passed 23 March 1933
Every issue with power and control of all these big organizations steem from the fact that their software does not respect the 4 freedoms. The west very much likes “free” trade, but how can you have free trade between so many different regulations and so many power disparities?
At least with Free Software, even if you don’t want to trust the entity you are dealing with, at least you can inspect, learn and adapt its software, so that people don’t have a big service disruption.
Stallman was right.
In a vacuum. In practice, these platforms take massive resources to run and improve, and consumers won’t deal with the inconvenience of distributed systems.
Free software doesn't lay cables under the Pacific ocean.
Platforms require wide, simultaneous participation by content producers and consumers, which requires popularity, which requires persistent marketing efforts, which requires a mountain of capital. Platforms are much more a business with a brand than it is software.
edit: someone else mentioned distributed systems, again the point is not these became decentralized or federated or anything like it, the point is them being Free, as in you can see how things are done, it gets harder to perverse the trust. And lets say a bad platform from a foreign entity is shown to compromise your national security, there are multiple options besides just showing the issues, presenting solutions/patches to the problem that troubles your nation, and last case scenario, migration path to the citizens using that service to a in.country managed one. The last one was being tried, having Microsoft/Oracle managing TikTok in the states, would a situation like that become easier with time, had all these platforms been Free Software?
You can have a 100% trustworthy ghost town, and nobody cares.
Or you can have a billion people on a communist spying platform, and everybody wants to join because the platform is alive.
The only solution to bad legislation is political participation. If you're in the US, call your senators and representative and demand for them to vote against the RESTRICT Act. It takes just a minute or two to contact each congressperson, and it's one of the most practical ways for a person to effect political change. If you don't like to make phone calls, sending each of them an email would still have a higher impact than doing nothing.
Contact information for members of the U.S. Congress: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Section 5(a)(3)(c)
(a) Priority Information And Communications Technology Areas.—In carrying out sections 3 and 4, the Secretary shall prioritize evaluation of—
...
(3) any software, hardware, or any other product or service integral to data hosting or computing service that uses, processes, or retains, or is expected to use, process, or retain, sensitive personal data with respect to greater than 1,000,000 persons in the United States at any point during the year period preceding the date on which the covered transaction is referred to the Secretary for review or the Secretary initiates review of the covered transaction, including—
...
(C) machine learning, predictive analytics, and data science products and services, *including those involving the provision of services to assist a party utilize, manage, or maintain open-source software;*
The problem with TikTok is that it seems to do nothing that domestic US companies don't do, so it's perfectly legal. Outlawing the problematic aspect of social media would essentially destroy Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and severely damage Youtube, so they need to make it a real ban on the company, not the company's practices.
I wonder if we would be okay with removing algorithmic feeds/recommendations. Feeds must either be a chronological order of content or it must be a human editor selected assortment of content. Leave room for algorithmic spam/malware blocking.
I honestly think that leaves Facebooks/Twitter/Reddit/Youtube in operation, although more layoffs might be required.
The US should know :)
https://web.archive.org/web/20230323142040/https://www.congr...
Why does it seem like the snowball has only just started rolling?
Plus a few popular US politicians finally deciding against the bill.
Media circus. The obvious endgame isn’t banning, it’s divestment. This happens all the time with critical infrastructure. We’re getting full-press coverage because it’s a social media asset and China fears are a bipartisan winner.
To the extent this isn’t purely messaging, it would involve a strengthened Cfius. Not the power to randomly ban, but to ban acquisition and investment. (Even this draft bill targets transactions.)
That came off as more accusatory than I intended. I am not implying a conspiracy/skepticism, but I really thought VICE (for instance) would pick this up before 6 days.
I guess HN is realtively "slow" news now?
Maybe because you mostly read mainstream media. I saw this being talked about in corners of Twitter, Telegram, Truth Social etc the day it was dropped
Its more of a time issue for me. I have cut out Discord, forums, twitter, telegram and such because they suck so much time, and I think I can manage HN.
Also if they suspect you of using a vpn, they could get a warrant based on that alone.
Just look at vendors on Amazon to see how effective banning by name would be.
That's the real problem, more than anything else.
Our governments are out to get us, not help us.
I heard arguments since TikTok doesn’t have public stock that wealthy individuals are losing out. Same with very liberal ideology is on TikTok, with is trying to be controlled.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by...
> TikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email.
> The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned.
> They looked at IP addresses of journalists who were using the TikTok app in an attempt to learn if they were in the same location as employees suspected of leaking confidential information. The effort, which targeted former BuzzFeed reporter Emily Baker-White and Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle among other reporters, was unsuccessful, but resulted in at least four members of staff based in both the US and China improperly accessing the data, according to an email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen. All four have been fired. Company officials said they were taking additional steps to protect user data.
---
The corresponding part is that the CCP has a stake in ByteDance and control over a board seat.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b...
It's true that banning TikTok will also benefit US social media companies. This is similar to how we restrict the manufacture of advanced weaponry to US manufacturers. Yes, this kind of policy creates an advantage for domestic producers. And yes, it also serves important national security interests. Both can be true at the same time.
Version 1.0 of a new bill gets passed and made law.
And a flurry of lawsuits challenging various parts of it wind through the courts.
Based on those rulings the law is either amended or repealed.
not everyone you talk to on the internet is "just like me!" Some of them are weird foreign nationals and they want to extract useful info from you then wreck your life.
I don't see the problem. We already restrict trade or banking with these countries. Social media apps and software are products like any other.
This is a pretty massive policy shift, no? All the other countries are effectively at frozen-conflict or proxy war status with the US, and heavily sanctioned. Putting China on that list is a major step towards at least a Cold War with China, let alone a hot war.
"You can no longer buy anything manufactured in China" would wreck the US economy in the medium term. It would also probably make the war over Taiwan inevitable.
The only way to prevent war. America is the only thing standing between them and multiple wars in the South China Sea, and we must continue to be willing to support nations like Taiwan.
Giving them access to widespread propaganda tools, dramatically produces a chances that we do when we need to.