Trump administration labels WeChat, TikTok ‘threats’ to national security, bans transactions with both United States president Donald Trump has issued two executive orders banning Chinese messaging service WeChat and made-in-China-but-only-operating-abroad social network TikTok, and labelling the two a “threat”. The Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok has the following to say about the app: TikTok …
why worry about Apple or Google putting you out of business by unilaterally removing your product (app) for sale from their walled gardens when the president of their country behaves exactly the same way. Nothing to see here congress...
I'm actually quite a big fan of the Apple approach that Google has mimicked in recent years. But I'll gladly lose that to avoid political interference in app development.
Time for Apple and Google to make a stand like they did against encryption backdoors and say they'll simply allow people to download and install apps from outside the app store.
Er, Google already does.
TikTok might go the route Epic Games did with Fortnite and provide an installer and instructions for sideloading, until they took that as far as they could and came across the barrier of non-technical users who were unable to do this and went crawling back to Google Play.
Come to think of it, Epic is backed by Tencent. Things could get interesting for Fortnite players, people who use the Epic games store, and all those games publishers which use Unreal.
You are ignoring the possibility that Trump, having lost the election by a humongous amount of <mail-in> votes, actually concedes the election, and in desperation, resigns as President of the United States having obtained a promise of a pardon for federal crimes from President-not-elect Pence.
First of all, Donald trump will likely be re-elected (please note I happen to live outside US and I have no political affiliation).
Second, there is a chance he might not want to go without a fight in case he loses.
Third, even if the best, most reasonable person will become PotUS, it is very likely he wouldn't want to abandon the position of force the US has in this moment where they can dictate anything to the rest of the world and nobody (except China so far) would oppose.
That would make Trump into Darth Vader & someone like Biden into Luke SkyWalker. I'll laugh my ass off if Biden flies an X-Wing up Trump's exhaust vent, blows his 'Star into so much space junk, and flies off to go do victory loops around a few battle cruisers in classic "Neener Neener Neener!"
Russians mess with elections... no need for an emergency.
Covid takes thousands of lives... no need for an emergency. And don't make me wear a mask!
TikTok's 15 second clips might be used for blackmail or spying (why, how? Who cares, it's the usual narrative)... invoke draconian measures to shut it down!
Or facilitate a cheap sale to a US company.
>Russians mess with elections... no need for an emergency
If you want to know who's 'interfering' with the 2020 election you can finger people like Louis DeJoy. This Republican fund-raiser was recently installed as the head of the Post Office and immediately introduced work changes to the USPS that were ostensibly more "business efficient" but in practice immediately impacted the delivery of mail. Like systematic barring of voters, reduction in polling places and all the other good stuff that Republicans do to hold onto thei grip in marginal areas its all a strategic move to try to salvage what is shaping up to be a wipeout. There's nothing the Russians can do to influence this one way or another, although come to think of it if they offered logistics help and montitoring they'd probably be useful (if not at all welcome).
Incidentally, our State Department has a budget to help influence elections in various parts of the world. But we're the good guys so I suppose its all right.
@DS999-
”[ban] ... because kids sharing dance videos on a Chinese owned platform is a national emergency?
Almost. I think this temper tantrum is because teens allegedly colluded over TikTok to reserve tickets for Trump's Tulsa reelection rally and, obviously, not show up. He was apparently incandescent with rage that the venue wasn't packed with people.
And here we are.
When he came to Dallas several months ago, I thought of reserving tickets and not showing up as well. But, turns out, if they have enough reservations, the tickets go to the people who actually show up. So the Tulsa debacle wasn't that the tickets were taken, it's that only a few outright idiots like the late Herman Cain thought it a good idea to come to a Covid-19 infection party. But of course, Twitler must have someone to blame for his own failures, always.
Because his fans are idiots. It's about pandering to his lackeys - SHOW strength, rather than actuality being strong and showing leadership even when things aren't all gluing your way.
It's Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burns. His morons think he is doing a good job (got that reply on YouTube forum) because he's using smoke and mirrors of distraction, "HILLARY!" and "TIKTOK!", and they're just too damn stupidto see though it. Or, more likely, not stupid, just don't care as well.
it sure did not take very long for the comment threads to devolve into a series of "Trump Hate" posts...
Personally I think the data slurping itself should be GDPR'd out of existence for EVERYONE, _INCLUDING_ Fa[e]cebook and Tw[a,i]tter, but within the USA it would require Con-Grab [aka Congress] to enact such a law. Good luck with THAT happening with the current bunch.
Whereas, foreign policy stuff is part of the Executive branch (aka Trump). My guess is that the current policy is a result of having asked nicely for China to STOP doing that, and they won't.
But if I said that Trump was in favor of just STOPPING the data slurp, and is doing what he can do about it right now, would anyone BELIEVE that?
Here, have an upvote. I'm nit much of a fan of Donald Trump either, but his job is to be a thorn in **EVERYONE'S** side, and he's doing a good job at that. Seems right now we need to *continue* pissing everyone off, it's the only way to goad the lazy and/or corrupt Republicrats and Demopublicans.
Should someone tell them that the Death Star was built by the baddies and destroyed by the goodies? I'm sure that Trump is more than happy to be cast as the evil emperor (with Pence in the Darth Vader role), but is that how they really want to seen?
Spoiler alert: two death stars are destroyed by the rebels and the emperor and Vader end up dead.
> Death Star was built by the baddies and destroyed by the goodies?
The Death Star was built by a strong leader who "drained the swamp" of the imperial senate.
It was guarded by a bunch of masked and unidentifiable federal stormtroopers dressed in white, who carried lots of guns but never managed to shoot straight and was destroyed by a bunch of robe wearing religious nutters from a desert flying a plane into it.
The difference is that the Chinese didn't just have a strop and ban them, They may have had a strop behind closed doors, but they used their actual laws, ie they have strict censorship laws which Google et al wouldn't or couldn't adhere to. You may or may not agree with the censorship laws in China, but they are the laws in place. AFAICIS, Trump is simply going after the Chinese companies "because he can", ie they are not breaking any existing US laws.
It was more of a question of when than if the fragmentation of the internet would occur. This is just one of the steps that move us all in that direction.
It's not hypocritical for the US to deny other countries access to the data they themselves access, it's just a recognition of the truth: data is king.
Personally I wonder if Trump has taken this action because Sarah Cooper (the woman who lip-syncs his various interviews and speeches) uses it to publish her videos, and those kids effectively sabotaged one of his conferences using Tik Tok to arrange things.
I believe he is narcissistic enough to do that using the excuse of national security.
After all, if he was truly worried about national security, he'd stop all the technology companies outsourcing production to China.
Interesting to consider that standard Skype app is unavailable in Android or IOS app stores for Chinese registered phone. Instead you have to install a special Chinese version. You can but guess where the user metadata and intercepts end up when a Chinese Skype to Western Skype call is made. It's a complicated world.
I work from home at the moment and unplug my PC's keyboard to use in the firms laptop, but the weirdest thing happened yesterday. When I went to plug the USB keyboard back into the PC it wouldn't go in, and so I swivelled it 180 and amazingly it went in. I was absolutely gobsmacked. And it didn't stop there. Oh no! The very same thing happened again just a few hours ago. Now how's that for defying the universal law of USB connectivity. Not once, but twice, it was the second attempt when it worked and not the third when you have turned it back to the first orientation that for some reason didn't go in.
I pity the users of Lightening connectors, as they are missing out on all the fun.
It may have escaped the notice of people who aren't living in the US but our entire governemnt is currently run on an emergency basis using direct orders from the President. Its true that most of these orders fail when they get tested in the courts but the Administration has found a couple of ways to deal with this, starting with flat out ignoring the courts. (The Attorney General is supposed to keep the Administration on the right side of the law but Barr is one of the chief enablers of Trump at the moment so don't expect too much from the Justice Department.) Anyway, what Trump is doing is probably illegal but there's probably a fair bit of gray area and legal wiggle room to sow enough legal confusion to cause this diktat to become effectively law.
One well known political figure who used a simple state of emergency law to change the entire political complexion of a country was Adolf Hitler. He became head of a minority government but due to the Depression and other emergencies, both real and manufacturered, he was able to get a law passed in the Reichstag that was call "An Act to Relieve the Distress of the Reich and the People". This, along with the compliance of the legal and law enforcment systems (taken over by party functionaries) allowed the governemnt to be ruled by a dictator. It wasn't a particluarly efficient government becuase it included a lot of 'friends and family' with plenty of personal enrichment. It did pass some racial purity laws, laws that were modelled on the Jim Crow laws prevalent in many parts of the US at the time. Anyway, you're all familiar with the history and as well all know (and we said then) "Of course, it can't happen here".
Executive orders to ban TikTok and WeChat but Android phones with pre-installed malware distributed through the government funded Lifeline program is OK?
Trump: "It's just poor people, who gives AF"
https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/105728/malware/pre-installed-malware-phone.html
Resident Rump the US Federal Secretary of Silly Tweets neither knows nor cares that which data silos the data ends up in, is by now largely immaterial. Various events prove that data silo security's about as strong as waterlogged toilet paper - it wouldn't surprise me if the NSA's data silos are about as well studied elsewhere as they are in the NSA's "Hallowed Halls" - ditto the rest of the US "Intelligence" community.
Oh, but how the mighty have fallen, in the midst of slack overselfindulgent bouts of self-pity!
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