Banning TikTok
Congress passed a bill on April 23, 2024, that will ban TikTok in the US unless they find a new non-Chinese owner within a year.1 President Biden is expected to sign the bill. The TikTok app parent company is ByteDance, a company founded and based in China. According to TikTok, the company is primarily owned by institutional investors such as the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group, with ByteDance employees and founder Zhang Yiming each owning twenty percent.2
The Washington Post reports3 that “ByteDance has repeatedly said that it has never shared data of U.S. users with the Chinese authorities, but U.S. lawmakers point out that the company could be required to turn over information to the government under Chinese law.” Since the Chinese government (aka the Chinese Communist Party or CCP) can legally demand the data, even if ByteDance will be faithful to not disclose it until the CCP demands it. ByteDance being located in China is ipso facto a security risk for Americans.
According to the 2023 TikToc news release, TikTok is legally a separate company with headquarters in Los Angeles and Singapore and has a Board with five members who are based in the US, Singapore and Hong Kong. Shou Chew, the CEO and a Board member, is according to TikTok, a third generation Singaporean and the COO, V Pappas, is an Australian living in the US. So the entire company, its offices and all of its leadership are located outside of China.
The question is whether or not the legal separation of TikToc from its parent company protects it from the Chinese law that could require the company to turn US users’ data over to the Chinese government. Additionally, the question as still remains whether or not TikTok is much different from other social media companies in their handling of data.
Are “Big Tech” and the FBI Safer than the CCP?
As was revealed in the Twitter files, US intelligence had (and likely still has) ready access to the data collected by big tech companies. And we all know that the users of big tech products are the product. There is no fee charged to use the products because the cost to the user is giving up their personal data to big tech to sell to companies and governments. The uproar is over whether TikTok is a Chinese company that may turn users data over to the Chinese government when in fact social media users readily turn their data over to Google, Meta and others who openly sell it and turn it over to the US government. In banning TikTok are we “straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel?”
We rail against the pervasive surveillance of the Chinese population by the Chinese government and the use of a social credit score to monitor and control that population. But London has also become a “surveillance state” with the residents continuously monitored by cameras much like in China. And since passage of the so-called Patriot Act, monitoring the US population by the Intelligence Community (IC) has been legalized. And despite there technically being a FISA search warrant requirement to spy on US citizen, it was revealed that the FBI used warrantless searches on Americans 278,000 times in the 12 months ending November 2021, denying US citizens their fourth amendment rights by spying on them without a warrant.
This information was widely reported by news organization of the Left and the Right upon its release in May 2023. The Fox News report on this was subtitled “The queries targeted people involved in Jan. 6 and George Floyd protests, and donors to a failed congressional candidate.”4 Their article included this reassurance from the FBI:
"As Director Wray has made clear, the errors described in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinion are completely unacceptable," a senior FBI official told Fox News Friday. "As a result of the audits that revealed these instances of noncompliance, the FBI changed its querying procedures to make sure these errors do not happen again. These steps have led to significant improvement in the way we conduct queries of lawfully obtained Section 702 information."
Fox News also reported that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said that there was a significant decline in the number of queries made in the following year (ending November 2022) due to changes made in the process. The cynic will still ask, is there really a decline or are they just making up numbers now? Or have they initiated a different program (that hasn’t been reported yet) as another way to continue the spying?
Reauthorizing the FISA 702 Process Without Amendment
The US Congress has twice recently reauthorized the FISA 702 Process, most recently on April 22, 2024, without including any of the amendments proposed by Members of Congress to build in better protections for Americans. The defeated “Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (HR 7888)” would have added stricter rules when searching for information about US Citizens and required mandatory audits. The result according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), as quoted in Forbes,5 is
If you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy. That means anybody with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, a phone or a computer. … If this provision is enacted, the government can deputize any of these people against their will and force them, in effect, to become what amounts to an agent for Big Brother.
Elizabeth Goitein of the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice law and policy institute posted on X, as quoted in Forbes
“It’s over (for now). A majority of senators caved to the fearmongering and bush league tactics of the administration and surveillance hawks in Congress, and they sold out Americans’ civil liberties. Section 702 has been reauthorized, not just without any meaningful reform but with “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history,” as @RonWyden aptly described it. It is nothing short of mind-boggling that 58 senators voted to keep this Orwellian power in the bill.”
Are We In 2024 Or 1984?
We now live under an expanded FISA 702 process that enables the federal government to commandeer private communications devices to spy on us all. The FBI tells us they have stopped illegally executing warrantless searches, but if that’s true it is perhaps the first time in history that a government agency willingly relinquished significant power. TikTok says they won’t share your data with the CCP but Chinese law says they must if the government requests it. We know Biden Administration Officials worked closely with Twitter, Meta, Google and others to control content on social media. We know that the cameras and microphones in our laptops and phones are always on and accessible to Big Tech (unless we install specialized devices to thwart them). Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (rebranded as X) exposed this government involvement in social media platforms but what assurances do we have that the backdoors are closed and coordination with the Intelligence Community has ended? (None.)
We know that the major banks willingly gave up credit card transaction information for everyone who was in DC on January 6, 2021, which included federal employees, tourists, people going to lunch, peaceful protestors and anyone else in DC for any reason that day. And we know that the 278,000 illegal warrantless searches targeted BLM, Antifa and J6 protestors. So much for the First and Fourth Amendments.
How have the IC and other Federal Agencies and the Biden Administration gotten so much power with so little oversight? Why had Congress not exercised oversight? And why did a majority in Congress continue the FISA 702 powers without adding needed controls?
Some are now saying that the tyranny of the US Government is not much different from the tyranny in China and other oppressive regimes, with only the Second Amendment preventing the repression from being complete. Not saying I agree but it should give us all pause.
Tucker Carlson’s View
Tucker Carlson was on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast last week. It was the usual Joe Rogan free wheeling discussion (lasting over three hours).6 The entire podcast is worth a listen but we will summarize what Tucker said in a two-minute segment near the end (starting at 2:51:16).
Tucker said that Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies, including the Chairmen and members of the Intel Committees. The Intel Committees are supposed to be the “parents” overseeing and guiding the “children” in the intelligence community. Except they are afraid of the Agencies and that’s not compatible with democracy.
In a representative democracy like we have, the people elect representatives to run the government on their behalf. But whenever you have unelected people who are not accountable to anyone (the IC), you don’t have a democracy. Tucker calls it tyranny but whatever you call it, it’s not democracy.
Tucker says that he knows personally that it’s very common for elected officials to have weird sex lives, or drinking problems. And they don’t want to be exposed. And they don’t want to rock the boat and have kiddie porn put on their computers. They feel threatened. Tucker has talked to many elected officials, intel officials and others in government. No one denies this is the case.
In Conclusion?
Whether or not you choose to believe Tucker Carlson, and since he is well connected I am inclined to believe him, Biden Administration involvement in curating what is allowed in social media, 278,000 illegal warrantless searches on US Citizens in one year, the relentless pursuit of peaceful J6 protesters, the over the top, six am swat team arrests of pro-life leaders, unprecedented made up charges against Biden’s leading political opponent and the former president, compromised elected officials that fear the IC. The list goes on. Even liberal Harvard Professor (Emeritus) Alan Dershowitz is awarding the Biden Administration “bananas” toward banana republic status.
The American people need to wake up and see the creeping (and sometimes running full-on) tyranny of the Federal government and peacefully protest and fight back. We need to seek exposure of wrong-doing and pray for revival. We need to get involved in our communities and governments at the local and State level. Most of all, we must not give up. America is the greatest nation on earth, despite her flaws, and is worth fighting for.
Tucker Carlson on the joe Rogan Experience podcast on Spotify (#2138 on April 19, 2024, starting at 2:51:16)
Thanks you Gus for saying well what I try to express about the absurdity of current state of affairs. Blessings
Unfortunately, at this point in history, trying to take on this issue does feel like being a gnat on an elephant’s back. I think all we can do is continue to be as involved as we can on a grassroots level, like you said. It’s going to take massive heart changes within man, ie. revival and reformation, to bring about the kind of change we want to see. Thanks Jeff!