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The House voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that could ban TikTok here in the U. S. The U. S. government is not allowed to do so unless the app severs its ties with China. The bill has now been sent back to the Senate, where its fate is unclear. Last night we heard from the bill’s main sponsors. Tonight, we hear an opposing voice from David Greene, director of civil liberties and senior official at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Note: Transcripts are both machine-generated and human-generated and edited for accuracy. They would possibly involve mistakes.
Geoff Bennett:
The U. S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that could ban TikTok here in the U. S. unless the app severs its ties with China. The bill has now been sent to the Senate, where its fate is still unclear.
Last night we heard from the bill’s sponsors why this bill is necessary. Tonight we heard a voice against it.
And we’re joined by David Greene, Director of Civil Liberties and Senior Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Mr. Greene, thank you so much for being with us.
And like me, you oppose this bill on First Amendment grounds. Last night we spoke with the main sponsors of this legislation, as I mentioned, Congressmen Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi. And Congressman Krishnamoorthi said of China’s practices that there is no First Amendment right. Nor is there a right to harm our national security.
Why do you think he’s wrong?
David Greene, Electronic Frontier Foundation:
It doesn’t think about the First Amendment rights of Americans who want to use TikTok and their right to communicate with others through it and receive information from TikTok the way they currently get it.
In fact, Americans have the right to use communication equipment like TikTok to obtain information, disseminate it, and use it to disseminate their own information. So I sense that Rep. Krishnamoorthi is very involved with China’s First Amendment rights, but that’s not what we’re involved in. about.
We are involved in the First Amendment rights of American users.
Geoff Bennett:
Isn’t China a special case? FBI Director Christopher Wray said China is the defining risk of this generation and that the Chinese Communist Party requires Chinese corporations to share data and insights about their users when requested.
This is the perceived risk posed by TikTok.
David Greene:
Well, it doesn’t matter; I refer the FBI director about the risk posed by China in particular, but I will point out that China is not alone in requiring its corporations to provide data when they request it.
The U. S. is doing much the same thing through national security letters and surveillance carried out under Executive Order 12333. Lately, there has been a debate in Congress over the proposed renewal of Section 702 surveillance. Therefore, the United States has many of those same teams at its disposal. .
China isn’t the only country requiring corporations operating there to supply Internet user data. Now, if China poses a specific threat, the U. S. can respond. The question is whether forcing the sale or banning the operation of this platform as it has been doing lately is the maximum. the right way to deal with this threat.
And our. . . What we’re saying is that it’s a matrix or at least the government has yet proven that it is. He communicated about this law in terms of First Amendment scrutiny and the specificity that the First Amendment requires.
Geoff Bennett:
So, what would be a more suitable solution?
David Greene:
Well, there are a few things.
One of the reasons why it is difficult to communicate a better solution is that the justification for this law helps to keep changing. Perhaps, those who support this law made it clear that this law did not refer to TikTok content at all. it’s just a national security risk that we can’t communicate to you about, that it’s just detrimental to China to have all this knowledge about American users.
I think what we’ve noticed in his interview and in a lot of the statements we’ve made today is that there’s a lot of fear about the content that American users get from TikTok. We heard thatArray
Rep. Krishnamoorthi talked about how, in China, they get healthy content about healthy living and STEM education, and in America, it’s drug paraphernalia and oversexualization.
We know that obviously it’s a question of content. It’s very complicated for the government, under the First Amendment, to limit content. So if the whole point of this bill is to say that we don’t like the content that you’re getting, that’s a very complicated thing for the government to do.
Geoff Bennett:
So if TikTok is forced to divest from the U. S. , how does that infringe on First Amendment rights?Because if I need to post on TikTok, I can post what I post, no matter who owns it.
David Greene:
Well, there are two things that can happen, right?
The first is that it would be so: it would simply close its doors, it would not have an owner who was not Chinese. It may just happen. Then those who used to use and gained data would no longer have it, they would no longer get it.
If they are sold to a U. S. company or other owner, they may still have First Amendment rights, as the new owners would possibly have other editorial policies. In fact, it turns out that, based on the comments of the sponsors in their presentation yesterday, I wish I had other editorial policies.
They need it to show other content to users in the U. S. and treat your content in other ways. Again, this is a violation of users’ First Amendment rights. What Congress needs is for them to get other information. They do this by having other owners and other editorial policies.
I think everyone realized what a change in ownership can mean for a social media company’s editorial policies and for users’ experience with it and whether they need to interact with that service.
Geoff Bennett:
Instead, you and your organization have called for comprehensive data privacy legislation. How exactly would this work and how would it solve this TikTok problem?
David Greene:
So again, if the factor is about knowledge, it’s a knowledge privacy factor, and that’s what some people said early on to justify the bill, it’s based on the concern that too much knowledge is being passed on from American users. for the Chinese, and that in itself was a national security factor.
And we agree that U. S. user awareness is a serious issue, not only for reasons of national security, but also for reasons of individual privacy. But privacy considerations are addressed through the passage of privacy laws. What we don’t have in the U. S. U. S. They are comprehensive knowledge privacy regulations that control how much knowledge corporations can collect about their users in the first place, when, to the extent that they can retain that knowledge, and how they can share it.
If corporations, TikTok or not, didn’t collect, retain, and percentage so much knowledge in the first place, they wouldn’t want to give TikTok such exceptional treatment. It’s hard to take Congress seriously when it comes to knowledge privacy if it doesn’t. pass knowledge privacy laws, if you don’t look at how TikTok and other social media corporations retain users’ knowledge, and if you don’t look at how knowledge brokers then buy it, and then redistribute that knowledge among many actors, adding governments and our enemies.
Geoff Bennett:
David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, thank you for your time tonight.
David Greene:
Thank you for having me.
Geoff Bennett is a co-anchor for PBS NewsHour. Es a political contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.
Courtney Norris is NewsHour’s Deputy Senior Producer for National Affairs. She can be reached at cnorris@newshour. org or Twitter@courtneyknorris.
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