TikTok ban on the horizon: New bill empowers Washington

Onur Demirkol
Mar 8, 2023
Misc
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Congress has rolled out a new bipartisan bill to empower the Biden administration, allowing nationwide application bans that carry potential cyber security risks. Even though TikTok's name is not directly in the bill, it is within the regulations' borders.

A coalition of bipartisan senators came together to support the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act. Mark Warner, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and John Thune, the top-ranking Republican on the Commerce Committee, lead the coalition. The legislation aims to give the Secretary of Commerce more power regarding taking action against technology companies that "pose undue risk to national security." The bill targets tech firms based in six foreign adversary nations: China, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. More information can be found here.

TikTok is not directly mentioned in the bill but is among companies based in one of the six foreign adversary nations. Chinese ByteDance owns the company, which is how the new bill includes both firms.

Warner's bill focuses on assessing and penalizing foreign companies from the aforementioned countries rather than targeting TikTok as a company, which Washington supported. "Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S. Before TikTok, however, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation's telecommunications networks," said Warner.

Senator Mark Warner and John Thune are leading the new bill that empowers the Biden administration on cyber security measures.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Even though TikTok said that it does not store the data of United States users in China, the government doesn't believe it. The famous social media platform has even taken steps to build plans that could eventually reduce the risk of influence by the Chinese government.

According to CNBC, "The Biden Administration does not need additional authority from Congress to address national security concerns about TikTok: it can approve the deal negotiated with CFIUS over two years that it has spent the last six months reviewing. A U.S. ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide. We hope that Congress will explore solutions to their national security concerns that won't have the effect of censoring the voices of millions of Americans," says TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter.

The Biden administration is working to strengthen cybersecurity measures in the US after tensions with China escalated several times. Last week, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee gathered to give Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok. Out of 40 members, 24 voted in favor of the decision, and the White House gave government agencies 30 days to ensure that TikTok is not on any federal devices and systems.

A couple of years back, the United States, alongside a couple more countries, banned the Chinese tech giant Huawei due to possible espionage. The relationship between the two countries is still very tense as now the U.S. is looking to ban TikTok. Recently, the White House revealed a fact sheet and gave information on the country's future plans for cyber security. Biden asked American tech companies to be more careful against cyberattacks. It looks like the U.S. will take more precautions in the near future against hackers and cyberattacks.

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Comments

  1. Seeprime said on September 8, 2023 at 4:12 pm
    Reply

    Missing from the “story”: Ukraine’s agreement to never use Starlink for military purposes. This is why.

    Ghacks quality is AI driven and very poor these days since AI is really artificial stupidity.

    1. Karl said on September 12, 2023 at 9:10 pm
      Reply

      “Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson forced to ‘clarify’ book’s account of Starlink incident in Ukraine War

      “To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”
      https://nypost.com/2023/09/11/elon-musk-biographer-walter-isaacson-corrects-detail-about-starlink-in-ukraine/

      1. Karl said on September 14, 2023 at 5:58 pm
        Reply

        I posted above comment to:
        https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/08/elon-musk-turned-off-starlink-during-ukranian-offence/

        Not to the following article about Geforce where I currently also can see it published:
        https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/29/how-to-fix-geforce-experience-error-code-0x0003/

  2. Anonymous said on September 11, 2023 at 10:09 pm
    Reply

    Well, using Brave, I can see Llama 2 being decent, but it is still not great?
    All these AI stuff seems more like a ‘toy’ than anything special, I mean, it is good for some stuff like translations or asking quick questions but not for asking anything important.

    The problem is Brave made it mostly for summarizing websites and all that, but all these Big tech controlled stuff, won’t summarize articles it doesn’t agree with, so it is also useless in many situations where you just want it to give you a quick summarization, and then it starts throwing you little ‘speeches’ about how it doesn’t agree with it and then it never summarizes anything, but give you all the 30 paragraphs reasons why the article is wrong, like if I am asking it what it thinks.

    SO all this AI is mostly a toy, but Facebook with all the power they have will be able to get so much data from people, it can ‘train’ or better say, write algorithms that will get better with time.

    But It is not intelligence, it is really not intelligence all these AI technology.

  3. Tom Hawack said on September 14, 2023 at 2:11 pm
    Reply

    Article Title: Tech leaders meet to discuss regulation of AI
    Article URL: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]

    The eternal problematic of regulating, here applied to AI. Should regulations (interventionism) have interfered in the course of mankind ever since Adam and Eve where would we be now? Should spirituality, morality, ethics never have interfered where would we be now? I truly have always believed that the only possible consensus between ethics and freedom is that of individuals’ own consciousness.

    Off-topic : Musk’s beard looks like a wound, AI-Human hand-shake is a quite nice pic :)

    1. Karl said on September 14, 2023 at 5:55 pm
      Reply

      Haha, oh dear, Tom.
      I thought that the comments system issue where comments shows up under a totally different article was fixed. But seeing your comment here, the “error” is clearly still active. Hopefully it is sorted as soon as possible.

      1. Tom Hawack said on September 14, 2023 at 6:40 pm
        Reply

        Article Title: Tech leaders meet to discuss regulation of AI
        Article URL: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]

        Hi Karl :) Well, let’s remain positive and see the good sides : one’s comment appearing within different articles (the one it was written form and for, another unrelated one) brings ubiquity to that comment : say it once and it’s published twice, double your pleasure and double your fun (“with double-mint, double-mint gum” and old ad!). Let’s forget the complications and inherited misunderstandings it leads to. Not sure the fun is worth the complications though. Which is why, with a few others here, I include Article Title & URL with comment, to ease a bit the pain.

        This said, I’m trying to find a logic key which would explain the mic-mac. One thing is sure : comments appearing twice keep the same comment number.

        For instance my comment to which you replied just above is originally :

        [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/#comment-4573676]

        It then got duplicated to :

        [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/29/how-to-fix-geforce-experience-error-code-0x0003/#comment-4573676]

        Same comment number, which let’s me imagine comments are defined by their number as before but now dissociated in a way from their full path : that’s where something is broken, as i see it.

        First amused me, then bothered, annoyed (I took some holidays to lower the pressure), then triggered curiosity.
        I’m putting our best detectives on the affair, stay tuned.

      2. Karl said on September 16, 2023 at 8:58 am
        Reply

        Hehe, yes indeed, staying positive is what we should do. Good comes for those who wait, as the old saying goes. Hopefully true for this as well.

        Interesting that the comments number stays the same, I noted that one thing is added to the duplicated comment in the URL, an error code, the following: “error-code-0x0003”.

        Not useful for us, but hopefully for the developers (if there are any?), that perhaps will be able to sort this comments error out. Or our detectives, I hope they work hard on this as we speak ;).

        Cheers and have a great weekend!

      3. Karl said on September 16, 2023 at 9:18 am
        Reply

        Whoops, my bad. I just now realized that the error I saw in your example URL (error-code-0x0003) was part of the linked article title and generated by Geforce! Oh dear! Why did I try to make it more confusing than it already is lol!

        Original comment:
        https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/08/elon-musk-turned-off-starlink-during-ukranian-offence/#comment-4573788

        Duplicate:
        https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/iphone-12-radiation-levels-are-too-high/#comment-4573788

      4. Tom Hawack said on September 16, 2023 at 9:20 am
        Reply

        Article Title: Tech leaders meet to discuss regulation of AI
        Article URL: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]

        @Karl, you write,

        “I noted that one thing is added to the duplicated comment in the URL, an error code, the following: “error-code-0x0003”.”

        I haven’t noticed that up to now but indeed brings an element to those who are actually trying to resolve the issue.
        I do hope that Softonic engineers are working on fixing this issue, which may be more complicated than we can imagine. Anything to do with databases can become a nightmare, especially when the database remains accessed while being repaired, so to say.

        P.S. My comment about remaining positive was, in this context, sarcastic. Your literal interpretation could mean you are, factually, more inclined to positiveness than I am myself : maybe a lesson of life for me :)

        Have a nice, happy, sunny weekend as well :)

      5. 💾 said on September 16, 2023 at 12:35 pm
        Reply

        Correct: AI is certainly overhyped, it’s also advertised by some shady individuals. It’s can also be misused to write poor quality articles or fake your homework.

        https://wordpress.com/support/post-vs-page/
        https://wordpress.com/support/restore/

        16 September 2023, this website is still experiencing issues with posts erroneously appearing in the wrong threads. There are even duplicates of the exact same post ID within the same page in some places.

      6. 💾 said on September 16, 2023 at 8:41 pm
        Reply

        Clerical error “[It] can also be misused …” you just can’t get the staff nowadays.

        Obviously [#comment-4573795] was originally posted within [/2023/09/14/artificial-intelligence-regulation-tech-leaders/]. However, it has appeared misplaced within several threads.

        Including the following:
        [/2023/09/15/redmi-note-13-specs-release-date-and-more/]
        [/2023/08/29/how-to-fix-geforce-experience-error-code-0x0003]

  4. Anonymous said on September 14, 2023 at 3:39 pm
    Reply

    “How much radiation is dangerous?
    Ionizing radiation, such as X-rays and gamma rays, is more energetic and potentially harmful. Exposure to doses greater than 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) in a short period can increase the risk of immediate health effects.
    Above about 100 mSv, the risk of long-term health effects, such as cancer, increases with the dose.”

    This ban is about NON-ionizing radiation limits, because there is too much radio wave power from the iphone. This has nothing to do with the much more dangerous ionizing radiations like X-rays, that are obviously not emitted at all by mobile phones. I invite you to correct your article.

  5. Anonymous said on September 17, 2023 at 5:03 pm
    Reply

    “Aaro.mil makes history as the first official UFO website”

    I wonder if it’s just smelly crowdsourcing for the spotting of chinese balloons or whatever paranoia they’re trying to instigate, or if they are also intentionally trying to look stupid enough to look for alien spaceships, for whatever reason. Maybe trying to look cute, instead of among the worst butchers of history ?

  6. Anonymous said on September 17, 2023 at 9:12 pm
    Reply

    “The tech titan’s defense”
    “Whether he provides a clear explanation or justifies his actions”
    “the moral compass”

    You take it for granted that this company should agree being a military communications provider on a war zone, and so directly so that his network would be used to control armed drones charged with explosives rushing to their targets.

    You don’t need to repeat here everything you read in the mainstream press without thinking twice about it. You’re not just pointing interestingly that his company is more involved in the war that one may think at first and that this power is worrying, you’re also declaring your own support for a side in an imperialist killfest, blaming him for not participating enough in the bloodshed.

    Now your article is unclear on how this company could be aware that its network is used for such military actions at a given time, which has implications of its own.

    Reading other sources on that quickly, it seems that the company was: explicitly asked ; to extend its network geographically ; for a military attack ; at a time when there was no war but with the purpose of triggering it, if I understood well. You have to be joking if you’re crying about that not happening at that time. But today you have your war, be happy.

  7. Anonymous said on September 30, 2023 at 1:21 am
    Reply

    comments and article dont match

  8. Gerald Brennan said on October 1, 2023 at 5:05 pm
    Reply

    The writers were on strike?

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