Tik Tok Ban? Patriot Act 2: Electric Boogaloo

In the technological age of the 2000s, there have been several legitimate concerns about safety and security raised by users and lawmakers alike. Usually, these concerns involve the targeting and exploitation of vulnerable groups, i.e., children. Since the dawn of the mainstream, widely used internet, the laws regulating it have failed to keep up with the actual concerns put forward by citizens. In our ever aging and increasingly technologically ignorant congress, a new target of these concerns is the popular video sharing app TikTok.

The main concern with TikTok is one of national security. Or, more realistically, the perception of a national security risk. Many believe that TikTok is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which bears no evidence supporting such claims. TikTok is a privately owned company registered in the Cayman Islands, whose 40 percent of shares are owned by American and Japanese investment firms. Another concern is that because of certain CCP laws, data from all users could be handed over to the Chinese government, which can be seen as a more legitimate concern but is unfounded because of Project Texas, which would hand over all user data to Oracle (a U.S. based company), is set to be completed in the near future. In a hilariously telling and terrifying hearing for the CEO of TikTok in front of congress, Singaporean native Shou Zi Chew answered these and even more absurd questions about the company and its safety. Some of the questions were quite indicative of Congress members’ knowledge, or lack thereof, of this app and the internet more generally. The only problem is that these members of Congress, right and left alike, already know that they want to ban this app.

Banning this app through the RESTRICT Act, though not explicitly specified, could lead to detrimental and authoritarian results. Like many historical laws passed in a whim of moral panic, such as the PATRIOT Act or the “War on Drugs,” this ban will most likely affect those who are the most vulnerable, as opposed to those who cause the most amount of harm. Big Data will still have little to no regulation, while everyday citizens will be encroached upon in their own homes. Regarding the PATRIOT Act, a controversial law passed after the events of September 11, this new law would only increase the government’s ability to survey its citizens, which is not good. In an ironic way, these laws make our government more similar to the CCP, which is the ultimate boogeyman to our old and misinformed Congress. I do not have to tell you that the CCP and its surveillance are bad, but becoming more like it is not the solution. Another irony is that the U.S. government already does what they fear TikTok will do. The government regularly buys data from private entities such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. In our digital age, privacy no longer exists, so why pretend U.S. citizens have any sort of privacy when that hasn’t been the case since at least 2001? Why virtue signal about banning things like TikTok to preserve “national security,” when it is the least helpful way to do so? It would seem obvious that the way to avoid all of this, encroachment from the U.S. and Chinese governments alike, is to pass laws protecting the data of U.S. citizens. Currently, there are no federal laws protecting your data. This new RESTRICT Act is not protective or preventative, but invasive and draconian.