{"id":217232,"date":"2024-03-15T17:20:18","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T21:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=217232"},"modified":"2024-03-15T17:20:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T21:20:47","slug":"why-the-tiktok-ban-is-so-friggin-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=217232","title":{"rendered":"

Why The TikTok Ban Is So Friggin’ Dangerous<\/b><\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did they tell you the part about giving the president sweeping new powers?<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Matt Taibbi
\nRacket News<\/p>\n

\"\"

Nancy Pelosi speaks to reporters after an intelligence briefing on TikTok<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s funny how things work.<\/p>\n

Last year at this time, Americans overwhelmingly supported a ban on TikTok.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Polls showed a\u00a050-22% overall margin in support of a ban<\/a>\u00a0and 70-14% among conservatives. But Congress\u00a0couldn\u2019t<\/a>\u00a0get the\u00a0RESTRICT Act<\/a>\u00a0passed.<\/p>\n

As the public learned more about provisions in the bill, and particularly since the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, the legislative plan grew less popular.<\/strong>\u00a0Polls dropped to\u00a038-27% in favor<\/a>\u00a0by December, and they\u2019re at\u00a035-31%\u00a0<\/a>against<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>now.<\/p>\n

Yet the House just passed the \u201cProtecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act<\/a>\u201d by a ridiculous 352-64 margin,\u00a0with an even more absurd 50-0 unanimous push from the House Energy and Commerce Committee.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What gives?<\/p>\n

As discussed on the\u00a0new\u00a0<\/a>America This Week<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0passage of the TikTok ban represents a perfect storm of unpleasant political developments, putting congress back fully in line with the national security establishment on speech.<\/strong>\u00a0After years of public championing of the First Amendment, congressional Republicans have suddenly and dramatically been brought back into the fold. Meanwhile Democrats, who stand to lose a lot from the bill politically \u2014 it\u2019s opposed by 73% of TikTok users, precisely the young voters whose defections since October put Joe Biden\u2019s campaign into a tailspin \u2014 are spinning passage of the legislation to its base by suggesting it\u2019s\u00a0not really happening<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not an attempt to ban TikTok, it\u2019s an attempt to make TikTok better,\u201d is how Nancy Pelosi put it.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Congress, the theory goes, will force TikTok to divest, some kindly Wall Street consortium will gobble it up (\u201cIt\u2019s a great business and I\u2019m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,\u201d Steve Mnuchin\u00a0told CNBC<\/a>), and life will go on. All good, right?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

Not exactly. The bill passed in the House that\u2019s likely to win the Senate and be swiftly signed into law by the White House\u2019s dynamic Biden hologram is\u00a0at best tangentially about TikTok.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ll find the real issue in the fine print. There, the \u201ctechnical assistance\u201d the drafters of the bill reportedly received from the White House shines through, Look particularly at the first highlighted portion, and sections (i) and (ii) of (3)B:<\/p>\n

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As written, any \u201cwebsite, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application\u201d that is \u201cdetermined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States\u201d is covered.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Currently, the definition of \u201cforeign adversary\u201d\u00a0includes<\/a>\u00a0Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.<\/p>\n

The definition of \u201ccontrolled,\u201d meanwhile, turns out to be a word salad, applying to:<\/p>\n

(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;<\/em><\/p>\n

(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or<\/em><\/p>\n

(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A \u201cforeign adversary controlled application,\u201d in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone \u201csubject to the direction\u201d of either of those entities. Or, it\u2019s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>, the bill was fast-tracked after a secret \u201cintelligence community briefing\u201d of Congress led by the\u00a0FBI<\/a>,\u00a0Department of Justice<\/a>, and the\u00a0Office of the Director of National Intelligence<\/a>\u00a0(ODNI). The magazine noted that if everything goes as planned, the bill will give Biden the authority to shut down an app used by 150 million Americans just in time for the November elections.<\/p>\n

Say you\u2019re a Democrat, however, and that scenario doesn\u2019t worry you. As\u00a0America This Week\u00a0<\/em>co-host Walter Kirn notes, the bill would give a potential future President Donald Trump \u201cunprecedented powers to censor and control the internet<\/a>.\u201d If\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0still doesn\u2019t bother you, you\u2019re either not worried about the election, or you\u2019ve been overstating your fear of \u201cdictatorial\u201d Trump.<\/p>\n

We have two decades of data showing how national security measures in the 9-11 era evolve. In 2004 the George W. Bush administration\u00a0defined<\/a>\u00a0\u201cenemy combatant\u201d as \u201can individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.\u201d Yet in oral arguments of\u00a0Rosul et al v Bush\u00a0<\/em>later that year, the government conceded an enemy combatant could be a \u201clittle old lady in Switzerland<\/a>\u201d who \u201cwrote a check\u201d to what she thought was an orphanage.<\/p>\n

Eventually, every element of the requirement that an enemy combatant be connected to \u201chostilities against the United States\u201d was dropped, including the United States part. Though Barack Obama\u00a0eliminated<\/a>\u00a0the term \u201cenemy combatant\u201d in 2009, the government retained (and retains) a claim of authority to do basically whatever it wants, when it comes to capturing and detaining people deemed national security threats. You can expect a similar progression with speech controls.<\/p>\n

Just ahead of Monday\u2019s oral arguments in\u00a0Murtha v. Missouri<\/a><\/em>, formerly\u00a0Missouri v. Biden<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/em>the case so many of us hoped would see the First Amendment reinvigorated by the Supreme Court \u2014\u00a0this TikTok bill has allowed the intelligence community to re-capture the legislative branch.<\/strong>\u00a0Just a few principled speech defenders are left now.\u00a0Fifty Democrats<\/a>\u00a0voted against the bill, which is heartening, although virtually none argued against it on First Amendment grounds, whis is infurating. Pramila Jayapal had a\u00a0typical take<\/a>, saying the ban would \u201charm users who rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, many of whom are people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contrast that with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who went after members of his own party, singling out Republicans encouraging a governmental power grab after years of fighting big tech abuses not just at TikTok but other platforms.\u00a0<\/strong>These people claim to be horrified, he said, but actions speak louder than words.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at their legislative proposals,\u201d he said, noting many want to \u201cset up government agencies and panels\u201d on speech, effectively saying \u201cIf you\u2019re not putting enough conservatives on there, by golly we\u2019re going to have a government commission that\u2019s going to determine what kind of content gets on there.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These, he said, are \u201cscary ideas.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n