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Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

bloomberg.com

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Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#341

Post by PixyMisa »

thinkingemote wrote: post #100
politician wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a strong case to be made that WeChat is, as a practical matter, a public minister as defined in Article 2. Therefore, the executive has the right to refuse their presence in the US. All Chinese companies operate under the direction and control of the CCP; we can arrive at the conclusion that a company is a public minister if companies are people, and they act at the behest of their home government. h…

To clarify the CCP control of companies: 1) The CCP has to have a representative on the board. The ccp say it's like a union rep(!) since they are communists. But they don't have a veto, just a vote like other board members. 2) This condition is only for companies over a certain size. 3) This also applies to large foreign companies not just domestic.

Same thing as a political officer. They don't officially have a veto, but if you cross them, you'll find yourself promoted to permanent deputy assistant undersecretary at the branch office in Nyingchi.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#342

Post by [deleted] »

newen wrote: post #312
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their usage of wechat is more likely a liability than a benefit. It gives a foreign adversary visibility into their activities in US. How can they become activist or work for change if their government is monitoring everything they say? Do the Hong Kong protest crackdown not scare anyone else? Now they have an excuse. It won’t look suspicious if they communicate to each other on channels that can’t be monitored by th…

Why are you assuming an average Chinese citizen would want to be an activist or work for change? Most likely they have positive views of their government just like the average American citizen.

[deleted]

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#343

Post by unishark »

mywittyname wrote: post #313
philliphaydon wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

china probably doesn’t need to ask. They already know who you are and what your social media is.

The US Government only "asks" because it further benefits them. Maybe falsifying the documents counts as another charge to pressure someone they are holding, or legal counsel suggested it to ensure that any information found could be readily used against the person in a legal preceding, or plausible deniability cover for FOIA requests. I can think of a lot of ways that asking someone for something you already know ab…

I think you overestimate them. Sometimes 100 percent of government paperwork consists of telling them stuff they should already know.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#344

Post by kube-system »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #50
hutzlibu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger lies in letting a foreign government controll the communication of americans. But for me as a german, I actually neither want the chinese, nor the US-government (nor the german government) to controll my communication.

It's an app for crying out loud. No one is "controlling communication of Americans" through an app.

Propaganda is wildly effective, the medium is largely irrelevant.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#345

Post by PixyMisa »

supernova87a wrote: post #112
politician wrote: post #47

All sovereign nations reserve the right to regulate foreign goods, vessels, diplomats, currency, and peoples distinctly from their native counterparts. Apps are truly no different.

If this is your legitimately held view (and I agree to some extent with the core idea), at least let's not be naive about it. Don't think that this was a well-reasoned decision with careful justification about the causes, potential, solutions, and impacts on US economics and society. It was a guy asking "what can we do to create some leverage over this adversary I don't like? (and was just told about yesterday)" Don'…

Implementing restrictions on trade and financial transactions with Venezuela and North Korea? What a novel idea.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#346

Post by toomanybeersies »

gaoshan wrote: post #334
tatrajim wrote: post #123

Honest question for Chinese users of WeChat: have you ever thought twice about WeChat posts and communications, whether they'll be deemed "acceptable" to censors? Everyone I know self-censors nearly constantly, if unconsciously. A good example: in a discussion of this case I was reading today in Chinese the author ironically noted that he couldn't summarize the US government's position because in a large WeChat group…

"have you ever thought twice about WeChat posts and communications, whether they'll be deemed "acceptable" to censors?" Many Chinese do indeed think about this. I've heard people quite literally say, "Don't put that in the chat, we don't want trouble". I've seen group chats get blocked for saying the "wrong" thing. I also hate to see the US essentially giving credence to China's approach of blocking things by followi…

> Don't put that in the chat, we don't want trouble

I've heard people say exactly the same thing about Facebook. I guess the difference is that it's usually in regards to incriminating messages (e.g. drugs), and not censorship of ideological speech.

Self-censoring on non-secure, non-anonymous messaging platforms, and especially in group chats, is not necessarily a bad thing. Consider anything you write in a group chat as public, because there's it easily could be.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#347

Post by unishark »

valuearb wrote: post #194
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the NSA make HK protesters disappear? There’s great alternatives to wechat that are secure by design, rather than spy-by-design, such as telegram or signal.

That should be for the users to decide. My point is whatever they choose is likely going to be government monitored. And the US has done hundred of renditions without trial, so while far from the scale of China, US spy agencies still do some awful things.

> My point is whatever they choose is likely going to be government monitored.

And _their_ point, which came first and you came here to argue against, is CCP monitoring is especially bad for particular political reasons.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#348

Post by kube-system »

matthewmcg wrote: post #175
aphextron wrote: post #42

From the beginning of this I never understood how there could be any legal basis whatsoever for the ban. Apparently that's because there was none.

That's correct. The law that the executive order cites targets financial transactions and specifically exempts information services.

You are reading it correctly but misinterpreting the implication.

At the minimum, you can’t publish an app on the Google’s or Apple’s app stores without a financial transaction. It’s essentially impossible to conduct business abroad (even “free” business) if you can’t legally transact.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#349

Post by toomanybeersies »

mantap wrote: post #219
tatrajim wrote: post #123

Honest question for Chinese users of WeChat: have you ever thought twice about WeChat posts and communications, whether they'll be deemed "acceptable" to censors? Everyone I know self-censors nearly constantly, if unconsciously. A good example: in a discussion of this case I was reading today in Chinese the author ironically noted that he couldn't summarize the US government's position because in a large WeChat group…

I don't use WeChat myself but it seems WeChat is the modern equivalent of sending mail into or inside the Soviet Union. You know it will be read by censors, but what is the alternative? Not sending mail?

Voice calls are a slightly more "secure" alternative to text messaging. It's more resource intensive to store and analyse audio/video than text, and less accurate to boot.

It's easier to run

  `SELECT * FROM messages where messages.body LIKE '%tiananmen square%'`
than it is to run speech-to-text over bulk data and run the same search. Obviously that's a trivial example, but digital text (i.e. not handwritten) is always going to be easier to parse than speech.
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