In my opinion, the best writer on economics today is Tom Hazlett. He has a great way with words. And good writing always requires good thinking.
Tom has recently recent posts It was so good about the TikTok ban that I couldn’t resist posting it as one of my weekly reading posts on Sunday.
he wrote:
And President Joe Biden signed The Protecting Americans from Control Applications by Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024. It requires China-based company ByteDance to spin off TikTok or watch it get banned. Separating the company from the app would probably solve the problem. other The problem TikTok is often blamed for is the loop that links the personal data of U.S. users to the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok argues that the loop has already been broken because U.S. user data is now stored at Oracle in Texas. Congress counters that this is as implausible as TikTok’s baby talk.
If Congress had information about communists, Tell me! The 2000s Homeland Security Threat Assessment color chart is tan, rested, and ready. However, it is true that companies are shutting down because of mere rumors. teeth Ugly imports from China.
later:
Rather than shouting about potential threats, TikTok’s adversaries should report actual deceptions and violations of trust. If criminal acts, such as misappropriating users’ data, are crimes, such fraudulent acts should be prosecuted by the authorities. But here national security experts are often getting reckless.
new york times Reporter David Sanger, The perfect weapon (2018) provides an excellent background. Around the summer of 2014, U.S. intelligence agencies discovered that a large state actor (which officials believe was China) hacked into U.S.-based servers and stole the data of 22 million current and former U.S. government employees. discovered that it had been stolen. More than 4 million of these victims lost highly personal information such as Social Security numbers, medical records, fingerprints, and background checks. U.S. databases were left unencrypted. This was such a sensational flaw that when the theft was finally discovered, it was discovered that the leaked data had been (oddly) encrypted. This was an upgrade that hackers conscientiously provided in order to perform the infiltration in stealth.
This is the culprit. Sanger reports that “the administration has never matched the 22 million Americans who lost their data, except by chance.” Victims were simply notified that “some information may have been lost” and offered a credit monitoring subscription. This in itself was a bit of a ruse. The hack was identified as a hostile intelligence operation, as the lifted data was not sold on the dark web.
I was one of those 22 million people. I remember well the innocuous letter I received from the U.S. government. This will be explained in detail in the appendix.
Which leads me to wonder: Who is the bigger threat to Americans’ privacy: the Chinese government or the US government? The Chinese government has limitations on what it can do with stolen personal data. The US government, being here, has broader limitations.
Haslett concluded:
U.S. authorities are stirring up the possibility of a leak that tramples free speech while silencing the American public about the actual leak. Banning TikTok is fool’s gold. The First Amendment is pure genius. Let’s keep one of them.
When it comes to First Amendment issues, it was striking that Sen. Mitt Romney wants to ban TikTok. because He wants to limit freedom of speech.
The following is report in New Republic.
“I mean, Israelis are usually good at PR. What happened here? Why were they, and we, so powerless to convey the reality on the ground and our point of view?” ” Romney Asked Blinken did not seem to believe that the images of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza were causing outrage in the United States.
Romney then explained that the ban on TikTok is overwhelming. passed it The app was approved by both houses of Congress because of widespread Palestinian support.
“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for potentially shutting down TikTok and groups of that nature. Compared to posts on TikTok and other social media sites. “If you look at the number of references to Palestinians in TikTok broadcasts, that’s by far the most. So that’s really interesting and it gives the president an opportunity to take action on that.” said.
Politicians often like to blame others for their own motives. We don’t know if Mr. Romney’s primary motivation for voting against TikTok was what he described above. But the context makes it clear that this was Mr. Romney’s motive.
P.S. I I wrote about this issue Announced in August 2020. Here is an excerpt at the end.
What about the third objection to trade with China, that China can use various apps to monitor Americans? Again, the other two objections to trade with China As in, this is true. But it’s hard to see how that matters with TikTok, the latest major case of such surveillance. One August discussionHoover economist John Cochran I tried Hoover historian Niall Ferguson and Hoover national security expert H.R. McMaster both supported the view that TikTok is a danger to Americans. Ferguson argued that TikTok is addictive to young people. Like computer games, which I think it certainly is, but it has nothing to do with China.
McMaster claimed that TikTok collects data on Americans, especially young people. We’re sure this is true, just as Facebook and Instagram do the same for different audiences. But how does this harm Americans in any meaningful way? Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute I wrote recently:
One can imagine how such information could be misused by a government interested in surveillance of its own citizens, but Midwestern teens posting cat videos are trying to convince Maoists that their It’s hard to articulate a consistent reason why you should fear that your system settings and location information are being scrutinized.
People cut off a lot of leeway for young women’s dance performances, as we learned When a video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing while she was a student at Boston University was leaked. My own reaction was that she’s a great dancer.
HR McMaster claimed that the Chinese government wanted to “weaponize data”. That’s probably true. But how exactly can we weaponize data about, say, young women dancing? Interestingly, he cited the Chinese government’s hacking of millions of federal employees’ sensitive data several years ago as an example of the Chinese government collecting data that could harm Americans. was Severe. But notice they did it without a deal. (DRH P.S.: No TikTok.) Additionally, the lack of security provided by the U.S. federal government made hacking easier than it would have been otherwise. In 2015, I was a U.S. federal employee When a hack occurs And then Beth F. Covert, the Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote me a letter informing me that my data had been hacked. Here is an excerpt from her letter:
Because you applied for a job or submitted a background check form, the information included in our records may include your name, social security number, address, date and place of birth, place of residence, education, and employment history. , an individual’s international travel history, and information about the individual. Immediate family members, business acquaintances, personal acquaintances, and other information used to conduct and determine background checks.
She added, “Our records indicate that your fingerprints may have been compromised during the cyber intrusion.”
I distinctly remember that the hacked form I filled out the previous year asked me if I had had an affair in the past seven years. You see, this was important because the U.S. government needed to know if I could be blackmailed. Luckily, my answer was “no,” but it’s interesting to note that the U.S. government is making it easier for the Chinese government to blackmail federal employees who answer “yes.”
It’s that kind of data I want the federal government to protect, not photos of young girls dancing.
