How were Snowden revelations of USG<>Bigtech relationship materially different from what's happening here? Maybe it was less transparent?
Any "woke" person can see the cognitive dissonance here. It's all fine that you use the geopolitical rivalry argument but not if you try to paint one side of the argument as "free" and "liberal" and "subject to rule of law" when it's clearly not the case
China's kompromat and industrial espionage policies differ from those of the US.
It is off base to compare while ignoring intentions and impact, because they're Very different countries.
We don't always succeed at that, but at least we have that as our society and government's guidestar, and legal and political processes for self-correcting.
The Communist Party has exactly zero of any of that, and an ideology entirely oriented around justifying getting and keeping power by any means necessary.
How do you mean exactly? I'm not sure how you can draw that conclusion from what I said. Politically I'm an independent, there's no real home for me any US political party.
In this particular case you support U.S oversight over personal data rather than personal privacy(i.e banning data harvesting).
It's like saying it's fine for the Democrats to harvest personal data because they have a better track record than the republicans and after all "you" are democrat so being part of this select group makes you feel safe from a potential abuse. The sensible/right thing to do would be to ban the data harvesting.
Yeah but instead to ask for a ban on data harvesting "you" complain only about China avoiding the elephant in the room. As it's said: Lead by example!
Let's ban this data harvesting and make this a discussion about individual rights not China social app rise or U.S domination(though the meta apps). That's why I said you are playing "party" politics. Yeah China is bad but why should I choose the lesser evil instead to do the right thing?
I really hoped that China being a rough actor could actually bring something good to the whole world as we have to reevaluate our trust model: Why should I trust a foreign company, a local company, my gov or a foreign gov to harvest all this personal data. Why do they need all this data and they use it?
I think the EU digital market act and GDPR is a step in the right direction not selectively banning certain apps that do not align with the interests of a small government or an over reaching gov such the U.S. We have to fight for our rights not the exclusive rights of super governments to invade our privacy.
It is extremely easy for a government to infiltrate into these organizations and get their hands on it, it has happened at Twitter [1], for instance.
So, yes, the problem IS data collection in the first place.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-twit...
I do agree that data collection is at the core of the problem, but Twitter really should have done a better job.
No amount of "security" is enough for an actor who wants to do this and has privileged to the data. This is almost impossible to out-engineer, if you think a company like Twitter cannot solve "such an easy problem" you're being naive.
There's a shitload of data for sale from brokers. So foreign governments might not even need much from a company like FB. Perhaps just enough to confirm the validity of data purchase from other sources.
We have a system where due process is required. Sometimes authorities break those laws. But the system and culture is nonetheless there and for a reason.
That's kind of a big difference here.
The CCP has mandatory seats on the bytedance board and wants a copy of all the data so they can target people.
Spying is bad, murder is next-level bad.
Stop it all, but start with the bigger issues first.
> The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
~ John Erlichman, Nixon's Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs
And decades of those policies have left the US with close to eight times the prisoners per capita of China. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Prison...
And the US has no problem executing prisoners, and in fact unlike China has no problem executing someone for crimes committed while a minor (only the US, Iran, Pakistan, and Somalia do this).
And that's before even getting into the extrajudicial politically motivated killings like Fred Hampton's murder, the MOVE bombing, or the recent odd proclivity of Ferguson and BLM protest organizers to "kill themselves" by hanging in a public tree, or "shooting themselves" in the head and then torching the car that they were in.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests...
Or did you just make it up and it's a word reserved for people in nations you hate?
Dissidents = "Disagreeing, as in opinion or belief"
The government in power decides who this is and then acts against them according. The CCP just happens to use lethal force on a massive scale in this regard.
Speak up for those who can't
The Chinese Government can't do anything to me unless I go there. Meanwhile my own government here presents an ever-present real life danger on multiple fronts. I still don't exactly fear it, but at least I know which is more likely to do me harm. Or for that matter, to do harm to others with my tax dollars.
This isn't to say that the USG should be admired or emulated, far from it, but as someone who's neither Chinese nor American, I think it's an objective truth that most people in the world fared better under 20th century American-hegemony than the worldwide Sinicization which the CCP has made clear is its aim.
The additional data that TikTok tries to gather from the mobile OSs is insignificant compared to what you can get from videos that people take willingly.
Russian soldiers use VK, that doesn't stop OSINT researchers tracking them down on there.
Granted collecting say interest data based on viewing figures would be a precursor (I suppose it's likely that TikTok could figure out if a customer leaned left or right politically). But again that's not what the complaint is about.
It's also hard to ignore that TikTok's responses are at face value reasonable (such as evaluating touch patterns to identify bots... that's obviously something they have to do given the predominance of bots on social media platforms).
A forseeable future is one where Americans are using VPN to access Tik Tok and then we see some government officials clamoring for an American version of the GFW.
Do you think Facebook, Twitter and Reddit should be able to do that?
There are some internationally recognized standards what constitutes a democracy, and the USA fits some and not others. For example, the USA wouldn't meet the criteria for democracy to be considered for EU membership, in the unlikely event it would apply for that.
The main sticking point is that it practices capital punishment, together with countries such as People's Republic of China and a handful of African countries. Intralegal execution of minors being especially problematic. Several treaties on international criminal law concerning war crimes is not recognized and its citizens are unlikely to ever be subject to the Geneva convention.
The second important point is the lack of an independent legal system. High ranking judges gets hand picked by politicians, in a very literal way. (Which is something that has also has happened in for example Poland. This is widely regarded as a loop hole in the EU democratic criteria. A country could not have been considered for membership under those conditions, but there is no jurisdictional power against reneging on that policy post membership. Subsidies gets frozen, but that's about it.)
Recently, major changes of governmental policy that affect millions of people have been made by an unelected body of officials who have lifetime terms. You may have even seen it in the news.
While I would love to take that on I am genuinely puzzled by what you mean. “No one can question American democracy because they don’t have a better one?” Sorry but if that’s it that’s a dumb take.
Actually no, it comes from far earlier in our history that that, GOP may have had it has a talking point not sure, and dont really care, but the GOP is not the origination of this
>Saying the US is not a democracy but a constitutional republic is like saying a car is not an automobile.
No, not all Republics are democratic, and not all Democracy's are republics.
The US has every very very limited elements that are democratic, and at our founding even less so then today. At the founding only the House was democratic everything else was not. IMO we need to go back to that, less democracy would be good
What? No, this is not a recent talking point, it's the core philosophical difference in this country since day 1. The names of the parties Republican & Democrat aren't just random words, they represent the philosophical differences in where the bulk of the power in government should rest (the republic being the system with input from the people, or the democracy being the direct will of the people).
Republicans generally believe direct democracy is dangerous and instead rely on the framework of the institutions of our Republic to act as guiderails preventing potential mob rule and other acts of capriciousness. The people get their say, within reason.
Democrats generally believe all power and decision making should come directly from the people, and the systems should be more fluid. They don't see them as guiderails they see them as unnecessary constraints on the people. The people get their say, and their will is done.
I would never argue that our politicians of each party believe in this fully, nor the voters for that matter. But this is a huge philosophical difference that predates the early 2000's by a couple hundred years. It's been a talking point since before our Constitution was drafted.
No, they don't. Also, the two original parties were the Democratic-Republican Party of Jefferson, Madison, et al., and the Federalist Party of Hamilton, Adams, etc al.
Both, BTW, favored what is, I modern terms, a democratic republic and a representative democracy, though the Federalists initially favored a stronger central seat of power and the Democratic-Republicans favored a weaker central seat of power, though the bigger divide quickly became over foreign policy.
The Republicans weren't a major party until after the Federalist Party collapsed leaving a brief period of unstable one-party domination, then the D-Rs fractured, leaving the Democrats and Whigs in the Second Party system, then the Whigs later collapsed and the Republicans and the Democrats formed the Third Party system with the most critical initial issue being over not abstract form of government but slavery. While the identity of the two major parties has been the same since, their political alignment has changed several times; we’re now in what is generally regarded as the Sixth Party system.
The names of the parties change over the years, and the ideologies shift. But we have essentially always had one major party pushing to put more power directly into the hands of voters and another major party wanting to conserve the power in the established governmental frameworks.
The two current parties are no different in that regard. Democrats want to abolish the Electoral College and run government from Ballot propositions (direct democracy in action). Republicans are against those things and want to shift more power to the states of the Republic.
You've shown examples of where the Democrats want more direct democracy, so there's that too. I don't know if this is a recent phenomenon or not. I've never known the Ds to make much about it either way until you mentioned it.
You are thinking federalism vs anti-federalism. That was Jefferson and Hamilton. The federalists won a long time ago, mainly through the interpretation of the commerce clause. Recent decisions by the SCOTUS is pulling back on that a little bit.
>Republicans generally believe direct democracy
Nowhere did I say the US was a direct democracy, I think that's what's tripping everyone up. I'm arguing against when people say the US is a republic and not a democracy. That is incorrect. If they had said direct democracy, I would agree with them. To say the US is a republic and not a democracy when every position of power in government was either elected, or appointed by someone who was elected, is incorrect. The democratic process is obvious.
>Democrats generally believe all power and decision making should come directly from the people, and the systems should be more fluid. They don't see them as guiderails they see them as unnecessary constraints on the people. The people get their say, and their will is done.
I don't see any evidence of this in modern politics. Which democrat has mentioned implementing a direct democracy?
Nope. At least not exclusively. The party's change over the years but we have essentially always had one party pushing for more direct democracy, and one party pulling against. A rose by any other name is still rose, but the philosophical idea of Republic government vs Democrat government is always there. And it's the key difference in the two parties.
>I don't see any evidence of this in modern politics. Which democrat has mentioned implementing a direct democracy?
The entire State of California is constantly riddled with ballot propositions, which is direct democracy in many case overturning the work done by their own representative legislature. And California is essentially a one party state so there is no one else to share the blame.
Federally, I can't go a week without reading about yet another proposal to eliminate the Electoral College and use a popular vote for President.
So if you're not seeing any evidence of it, where are you looking?
Ya, I was thinking federally only. California is its own animal and they do put a lot of things to vote, so you certainly are right with this example.
>Federally, I can't go a week without reading about yet another proposal to eliminate the Electoral College and use a popular vote for President.
That's just people complaining when their candidate doesn't win. If their candidate won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, they wouldn't let out a peep about it I'll bet. Democrats won't actually remove the electoral college because they use superdelegates to ensure the party can put its thumb on any candidate's scale (see Bernie v Clinton and Bernie v Biden).
>So if you're not seeing any evidence of it, where are you looking?
I'm talking about actual politicians proposing actual legislation and recruiting votes in the senate/house, not just lip service from the stump. They don't do it because it doesn't actually benefit them.
Most GOP states will then instantly forget their principled support for the electoral college and join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to kill it.
We know this because in 2000 the George W. Bush team thought it was (contrary to what happened) likely to win the popular vote but loose in the electoral college, and had prepared a legal fight against this scenario.
Again, to say the US is a republic and not a democracy is incorrect. It is both, just like a Civic can both be a car and an automobile.
Colloquial misuse of the word only sets people up for disappointment when they find out that a government they call a democracy isn't one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
This is about as useful as arguing about communism vs socialism, you may be right, in the typical HN pedant way, but all that does it make dumb threads dumber.
I'm not sure it is as black and white as you suggest.
If you were to create a time machine and bring an ancient Athenian to the modern day US, the Athenian would not recognize the US system of government as, democracy. With the exception of jury trials and referendums, the demos do not directly engage in governance.
The US doesn't even allow the majority of the population to select those who perform the actual governing. E.g., a person from Wyoming has much more representation in the Senate than a person from California.
And, for the president, the population votes, but the winner of this election is not the one who got the most votes from the population, it is the one with the most electoral college votes. Again, the Wyoming voter gets more representation with one elector per less than 200K Wyoming residents, and only one elector for over 700K California residents. It is how the US got Bush "W" and Trump even though they both lost the vote of the demos.
With all the money in elections, even if there were majority representation, the US would still have moneyed interests dominating politics.
Some argue that the US is an oligarchy:
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
They do have a say. How do they not?
(But keep in mind that 89% of them would disagree with your politics.)
>Where that government puts up roadblock after roadblock protecting itself from the influence of any but the obscenely wealthy?
Compared to where, actual oligarchies like Russia? Your metrics are uncalibrated af.
>I am Gen X. For around five decades now I have voted. It has never affected my life positively.
Congrats, you've apparently been privileged enough to not benefit from Obamacare or the drawdown of the Afghanistan war, or ending "Don't Ask Don't Tell", or the overturn of Trump's transgender service member ban, or the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act, or the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, or the halt on federal executions, or the recent reductions in unemployment, etc.
To you, these things were unnoticeable blips in an uninteresting history because you were never in the unfortunate positions that apply, like someone on welfare, someone in the military, etc.
>Roe v Wade overturned
You got this because all of the people who voted Republican got it (since the Republicans packed the Supreme Court with three conservative judges). So, for them, the system worked. Also, it gets funnier: Roe v Wade, if you read its Wikipedia article, was considered a pretty bad ruling, and some predicted that how poor it was opened the door for overturn later. Meanwhile, in the decades that the Supreme Court let it languish, like a hazardously-perched kludge giving women everywhere abortion rights, Democrats failed to vote for actual legislation protecting abortion rights as they should have.
That's why "you got" Roe v Wade overturned.
On the plus side, a strong majority of Americans support abortion, so it shouldn't be difficult to vote for legislation. The only thing that could mess that up is silly, entitled, nihilist attitudes like yours.
>But hey, we can get rid of the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling. Just not to investigate cops for being Nazis.
Unhinged.
> At least in China the majority of people actually trust their government.
Sure, as long as you don't say the wrong thing and get "disappeared", and have no one to turn to (since the one-party government also controls the courts and legal system), what's not to trust?? LOL, GTFO of here, you absolute fool
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappea...
None of these companies should be allowed to store and abuse the sensitive information people divulge when using many of these services.
My point is, if finding the political will required to stop TikTok is easier than it is to regulate data collection more generally, we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Furthermore, almost all of the devices and many of the chips we use to run apps are built in China. Why is the FCC not concerned about that?
It is folly to think that "Install Chinese government spyware on a phone" is the same level of effort as "Force the Chinese government to work on advanced persistent threats and install massive exfiltration malware on some of the most secure networks on the planet".
[EDIT] That is, things like credit card companies selling your purchase history. Obviously they do need to retain some of that information to operate, but they shouldn't be able to sell access to it or use it for any other purpose. Ditto banks, magazines selling subscriber lists, all that crap. Should not be legal.
Whoops, a bit too late for that.
I don't claim to.
The context is: US regulators arguing for operational restrictions of a foreign-to-the-US company on the basis of being controlled by an adversary of the US.
If you have any insight from a place with friendly relations with China, you're welcome to share it.
Does America represent the national security strategy of essentially all of Europe, most non-Chinese nations in Asia, and much of South America?
Absolutely, and to pretend otherwise is to be dreaming.
If you’re not in one of those areas then you are correct that your adversary is not our adversary. But it’s pretty statistically likely you are, and in that case the two are linked.
You’re welcome to return the trillions spent on your defense, of course, and set up your own naval strategy and naval supply chains to defend your trade routes.
Being spied by Russia, no problem. Being spied by China, no big deal either. But being spied by the USA or EU controlled entities can pose a life thread to any EU citizen.
US citizens have it only a bit better, since they are at least protected from the EU, and only their own government has power upon them.
You should interrogate your assumption that the government inside the state lines is less "adversarial" to everyone's interests than the one outside state lines, even at a level of geopolitics.
1. No it's not fine that American companies are threats to privacy and so on, and it should be dealt with.
2. However TikTok is a special case in that in addition to the above, it presents a national security risk (to the Americans), so it's reasonable to treat it differently and with more urgency.
In what way. Surely there is a shutdown button to press if TikTok go rouge.
Dissidents should rather use the social networks the gov. or establishment wants to ban than the one they control (e.g. FB).
There's some discussion about this in the article.
> Surely there is a shutdown button to press if TikTok go rouge.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "going rogue". The idea is that the company is already closely connected to the Chinese government. Are you saying the Americans should wait until they have undeniable proof that the data is being used for the political purposes of the CCP? Would they even be able to find that out (and if they did, would they be able to tell the world how?)?
> Dissidents should rather use the social networks the gov. or establishment wants to ban than the one they control (e.g. FB).
That makes some sense, sure, but we're not talking about security from the perspective of dissidents, we're talking about national security from the viewpoint of the government and the mainstream population, which is the one you'd expect the FCC to act according to.
So there is no need for you to bring it up, as a possibility, when it is already happening.
I get it. We want corps to stop hoovering up our data because they can use it to manipulate us with advertising, and they can mishandle it such that other bad actors can exploit it. I'm with you, this is a valid concern that we should address. But I think TikTok's specific case warrants additional concern because it's all that, plus it puts a geopolitical adversary in control of the data, countless devices, and a media channel central to the current cultural zeitgeist.
I don't think it's reasonable to wait for general regulation of social media corps while TikTok continues to do its thing, particularly if targeted action against TikTok is politically viable.
Edit: typo