Comment by mortdeus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mortdeus | Hacker News Reader

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Honestly, I personally think that this is a pretty impressive strategic move on Trump's part. I mean considering the strong precedence it sets for future Chinese web app developers who intend to market their products internationally. I also think it's important to note that this is us just leveling the playing field in the sense that when we try to market our products there, we have to essentially do the same thing and build a special version just for them that the CCP can monitor and censor at will.

With Oracle being in charge of all the backend operations in the US and being a 10% shareholder I can feel confident that they will ensure that the CCP won't have the ability to just pick up a phone and gain access to all of our WeChat information.

But with all that being said, I still have a problem with the idea of any Government having the ability to access our private conversations willy, nilly and without any real oversight over the NSA to ensure their investigations are legit and not spying for profit.

That's why we need to start demanding that end to end encryption becomes an option we can at least pay for the option to use on all of the major social apps we use like FB, Twitter, etc.

Idk, at first I thought Trump was probably overstepping his "conservative" position by trying to step in and regulate the free market in a way where he is now "picking winners and losers", rather than letting the consumers being the ones who get to make this decision (which is something I passionately believe Government should never empower itself to do).

But then after looking into the situation a little deeper, I saw that they actually have two seperate versions of TikTok. One called Douyin which is specifically for Chinese users and then TikTok which is for everybody else.

After realizing that they were already operating from a walled off garden that keeps their people seperated from us and vice versa, I started to see very little point in having both apps operate from China.

I don't think it's a great strategic move. It is the US government saying people can't use a tool that facilitates expression of our 1st amendment rights because of how the tool's owner uses & shares data.

Objections to how data is used can be solved by law, with needing to do it by fiat of the Executive Branch. If we don't like how data is going to be used, make laws the dictate the desired restrictions. Then use the rule of law, not the rule of man. Formal legal processes, not vague appeals to national security, would guide any determination on breaches of those laws & appropriate escalating penalties. It would also have the benefit of not escalating a user data issue into a major geo-political incident.

Chinese-owned companies have no right to withhold data from the state.

China National Intelligence Law

Article 7: Any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work known to the public. The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work

https://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1800/sources/2017_PRC_Natio...

I'm aware of this. I think the proper way to deal with this is with our own laws regarding data usage. Not with ad-hoc policy made for a single case. The issue is bigger than TikTok and handling it in this way not only makes it into a significant issue of geo-political maneuvering and economic policy, it doesn't actually solve the fundamental problem.

If we don't want consumer corporations owned through other countries sharing our data with their government's intelligence agencies, we need laws, not a shoot-from-the-hip approach that deals only with the high-profile panic of the moment example.

We're a "rule of law" nation. Absent extreme circumstances it should be laws that deal with actions we decide are improper. Otherwise we're no longer a nation of laws, we're a nation with a series of individuals who seek to enforce their will rather than the law.

I’m amazed you could say this without mentioning that US companies, too, have no right to withhold data from the state.

We have irrefutable gag orders which force compliance with the NSA [1].

FISA warrants are a joke, a rubber stamp at best. Only every 12 in about 33,000 are denied [2].

[1]: https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...

Two crucial differences: 1) Chinese law can be used to coerce indivudusls (including presumably tech company execs) to spy for the state. That is illegal under US law. And uf you're a Chinese student abroad, good luck saying no to the Public Security tity Office when asked to spy on other students.

2) US law, however evilly applied, requires a modicum of specificity and a fig leaf of justification. China law has no such need and can appropriate at scale to its bureaucratic desire (e.g, all IP addresses in Washington, D.C.)

I did mention it by saying I don't believe any government should be able to access user data without oversight.

However with that being said, I'm not totally against the idea of the NSA having the power to conduct surveillance to the degree at which it does.

It's one of those things where I am not happy about it, but then again I'm not so pissed off that im going to lead the charge that somebody deserves to be thrown overboard because of it.

While I agree our Presidents often abuse the office's power to use a defense of national security as a legal justification, I honestly don't think this particular situation is one of those instances.

I should also point out that Congress has passed a bill which bans TikTok (and I assume similar Chinese owned communications apps, I havent read the bill) from Government owned devices. So it's not like Congress is at odds within itself when it comes to understanding the overall potential security threat TikTok imposes on it's users when the CCP is allowed direct and unimpeeded access to user's data.

I also think that trying to pursue legislative routes when implementing policies that aim to protect not just America's but our allies best interests when conducting business with China is too slow and too political of a process when it comes to trade negotiations.

That is one of main compelling reasons why I believe the founding fathers decided they needed to have a powerful executive despite the fact that they didn't want one.

Negotiations are difficult enough as it is when it's the Government trying to get their government to act in it's own best interest. It would be virtually impossible to try and have our legislative branch negotiate with every other nation's legislature/executives directly.

It would be too difficult to offer terms you couldn't guarantee are concrete.

For these reasons I think it's fair if the President uses national defense as an argument to use aggressive tactics during trade negotiations.

It's important to note that as the People it's easier for us to reverse policy the popular majority of the nation as a whole doesn't like because the executive is the only branch of Government everybody gets a say in who gets to run it.

This allows us to avoid situations in the legislature where the people we vote into Congress make concessions across the aisle on things we elected them to be against. Or when the individual parties themselves can't come to a common concession on issues.

This is also why you also need an executive to act as commander in chief.

The legislature should be deciding who to declare war on but if you tried to make every single individual strategic move conducted in war something that first had to be passed as legislation, our government wouldn't be able to defend itself because it can't keep up with the fast paced, rapidly changing dynamics of war.

Trade and warfare are very similar in this respect.

Congress is at odds with itself: It has not passed any sort of blanket ban, the ban pertains to use on government devices. It has recognized a problem and provided a partial solution.

Not only that, it's a solution that deals with one single high-profile offender only, it did not create a set of statutes that could be readily applied to other such issues.

I don't understand your assumption that Congress would need to negotiate with other countries' legislatures. We don't need to negotiate with China to make our own laws regarding use of user data. Should that in some way cause friction with other countries, we do have a branch of government already tasked with performing individual nation-level negotiations: It's diplomacy, and we have 13,000 Foreign Service officers stationed around the world to perform the function, with many thousands more in the State Department working to support those efforts.

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