The TikTok? Ban: Too Many Distractions and Not Enough Selfish Considerations (Final)

-- By ArielBenson - 25 Oct 2024

PRC and National Security

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) created a national security law in 2017, the 2017 National Intelligence Law, assuring that they had infinite oversight over domestic data. The move also created a target on PRC’s back. Their move in the new era of trade and cyberweapon wars provided the evidence required for the United States Senate to base its decision on vis-à-vis regulating TikTok? .

Surface Level Criticisms

Regulating TikTok? became a controversy deriving from many sources, however most criticisms did not actively address the issue at hand, the protection of data for the sake of both personal autonomy and national security. Pushing back on regulating big tech that is headquartered elsewhere because of potential loss of content-creation deals ignores the same requests society has asked coal miners and oil drillers to do over the past twenty years, to pivot. The empathy of job loss can be present with the realities of the PRC’s past oversight and backdoor opportunism. The same goes for the fact that Capitol Hill can have both the 1) underqualified and xenophobic representatives and 2) messaging demanding privacy of personal data, a regulation long overdue from the United States of America. Two things can be true.

On the other hand, there are some domestic criticisms that get to the issue at hand. First, there is the criticism that there are other avenues to protect domestic data. President Biden enacted one of them in February 2024, finally calling for the bureaucratic and legal protections of American data. Not surprisingly, the long overdue call almost mirrors the PRC’s 2021 data protection laws (Personal Information Protection Law and Data Privacy Law). However, the pitfall in this argument is that it conflates data protection of domestic data on domestic soil with data protection of domestic data on extrajudicial territory. The TikTok? ban signals to other sovereign states that backdooring domiciled organizations to gain insight into user data is unacceptable and a transgression against the privacy of Americans/American domestic persons. Furthermore, Biden’s call for data privacy in his Executive Order requires the American government to create a regime for protecting American data from reaching the hands of adversarial countries because of domestic or internationally initiated transactions and storage. It deals with the act and obligation of organizations, rather than the policing of sovereign states and their imposition on aforementioned organizations.

Consider the Future

In my opinion, the one criticism that possesses merit is the inefficiency of the Bill. The Bill only addresses TikTok? because of its relationship with ByteDance? . It does not provide regulation around future organizations in similar positions, nor does it provide regulation around other ways the PRC may gain user data from TikTok? outside of demanding TikTok? itself for data (e.g. receiving data from third party data brokers). These critiques are difficult to refute. I will not attempt to do so. It is the error of the drafters for following the waves of political discourse and not considering the necessity of the Bill’s future relevance and all-inclusivity.

Addressing the Public

Protecting freedoms, the nucleus of the national security and privacy arguments, is going to require a renaissance. It seems like these issues, which would in theory be appealing to all individuals, are taking a backseat to other social concerns and chaos. The push from the government for such measures is understandable in the context of national security (because of information asymmetry), however it is surprising that broader society is not politically behind the efforts created to regulate what is assumed to currently be the most profitable and relevant information available to surveillants and marketers. Potentially, it is a symptom of the current distrust and disdain of the American government and its international policies. With the three branches on a streak of unpopular moves, it is understandable why younger generations, the ones that are most impacted by a potential TikTok? data “breach”, are unwilling to understand the relationship between ByteDance? (TikTok? ), the PRC, and the PRC’s objectively brilliant data privacy regulatory and surveillance regime.

In order to gain public buy-in, you have to properly showcase the harm. It is comparative to the public’s awareness of our environmental crisis. There will always be naysayers, however the majority of the population cares about their future vis-à-vis safety and security. The environmental protections cause has properly utilized the school system to ensure engagement with the issue. The education of data privacy and where it currently sits in the framework of international trade belongs in high schools. It is not as difficult as algebra, and it effectively provides an avenue to review the current state of the world’s diplomacy, conflict, competition, and even greed.

Unfortunately, there are not many wealthy and influenceable backers for these efforts. The national security issues will only be relevant when realized, and the privacy concerns are adversarial to those powerful and opportunistic. Critiquing how the government messages these concerns, encouraging academics to engage with these issues, and pushing local administrations to revamp education (as is typically done) to include relevant and worldly issues will provide the grassroot efforts necessary for data privacy and security.

https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-congress-bill-1c48466df82f3684bd6eb21e61ebcb8d https://oercs.berkeley.edu/privacy/international-privacy-laws/china-privacy-law https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/28/china-data-governance-security-law-privacy/ https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-data-to-china-government-if-asked-experts.html https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/31/24057422/tiktok-ceo-child-safety-hearing-tom-cotton-xenophobia https://www.blancco.com/resources/blog-china-data-protection-privacy-security-laws-pipl-dpl/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/02/28/fact-sheet-president-biden-issues-sweeping-executive-order-to-protect-americans-sensitive-personal-data/

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