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Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to Biden, who has already committed to signing it (www.theverge.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (19 children)

Ew. I looked through the bill, and here are some parts I have issues with:

Main text

PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CON - TROLLED APPLICATIONS .—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following:

(A) Providing services to distribute, main- tain, or update such foreign adversary con- trolled 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.

So basically, the US can block any form of software (not just social media) distributed by an adversary county for pretty much reason, and it can block any company providing access to anything from an adversary.

Definition of "controlled by a foreign adversary"

(g) DEFINITIONS .—In this section:6 (1) CONTROLLED BY A FOREIGN ADVERSARY .— The term ‘‘controlled by a foreign adversary’’ means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is--

(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;

(B) an entity with respect to which a for- eign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indi- rectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or

(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).

The adversary countries are (defined in a separate US code):

N. Korea
China
Russia
Iran

So if you live in any of these or work for a company based in any of these, you're subject to the law.

foreign adversary company definition

(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLI - CATION .—The term ‘‘foreign adversary controlled application’’ means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—

(A) any of—

(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;

(ii) TikTok;

(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or

(iv) an entity owned or controlled, di- rectly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or

(B) a covered company that—

(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and

(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—

It specifically calls out TikTok and ByteDance, but it also allows the President to denote any other entity in one of those countries as a significant threat.

So here are my issues:

I, as a US citizen, can't choose to distribute software produced by an adversary as noted officially by the US government - this is a limitation on my first amendment protections, and I think this applies to FOSS if the original author is from one of those countries
the barrier to what counts is relatively low - just living in an adversary country or working for a company based on an adversary country seems to don't
barrier to a "covered company" is relatively low and probably easy to manipulate - basically needs 1M active users (not even US users), which the CIA could totally generate if needed

So I think the bill is way too broad (lots of "or"s), and I'm worried it could allow the government to ban competition with US company competitors. It's not as bad as I feared, but I still think it's harmful.

Anyway, thoughts?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago (9 children)

Isn't Nginx written by a Russian? So is it now banned in the US? What other software has been effected by this legislation?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hah, well time to tell our CEO I'm shutting down our prod servers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry an American will be available to own it instead! And there won't be any problems because we're the best!

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

You missed the /s in your comment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

no comment needs an /s

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I shouldn't need one for that. But in the same vein...

I don't know what you're talking about, it's impossible for the world's only bastion of freedom to do anything wrong! We should just have the president and do away with things like courts!

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)