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Comment by polski-g | Hacker News Reader

Tiktok servers will be banned at the T1 carrier level, probably.

Do you have a source that the act is being interpreted by the government to include prohibiting network operators from serving traffic? That definitely seems like it would be a stretch given the text of the act

The act prohibits

> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.

> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.

With the following relevant definition

> (5) Internet hosting service.—The term “internet hosting service” means a service through which storage and computing resources are provided to an individual or organization for the accommodation and maintenance of 1 or more websites or online services, and which may include file hosting, domain name server hosting, cloud hosting, and virtual private server hosting.

Which I've basically read as "it will be removed from app stores and not be allowed to host content on US servers". Which as a matter of policy seems more than sufficient to reduce the reach of tiktok to a tiny fraction of it's current US user base.

The "and not be allowed to host content on US servers" is kinda funny as a requirement in context. Prior to the law being passed IIUC TikTok had already put in a bunch of work to make sure American data was stored in the US, with a US cloud vendor, with access controls, which were to demonstrate that this data was not accessible to the Chinese. Serving in the US, with big US cloud partner was meant to be a way to create confidence. If TikTok ends up being a webapp for US users, with our data definitely not in the US ... isn't that worse?

I bet if it comes to that, a DNS pollution alone will drive down 80% of traffic.

> Serving in the US, with big US cloud partner was meant to be a way to create confidence.

Huawei tried a similar confidence building tactic by paying UK cyber spooks to scour their code to show they don't have backdoors. The so called Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre. Didn't work out for them either.

Here is my question

If TikTok is no longer allowed to be hosted in US, how could they continue the service without transferring the data outside of US? It is going to be a bigger breach if they transfer US user data outside of US, right?

that requires a firewall at the border.

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