Congress is lying to you: TikTok is not a major threat and their bills are outright bans on the platform

by jovan1984

Washington, D.C. — Congress has been caught lying and gaslighting the people about their bills on TikTok.

When they got on TV, they claimed that their proposed bills are not bans on the platform.

But, as internet sleuths dug deeper, that is when some in the media, such as the Nexstar journalists (e.g. WJBF’s Barclay Bishop), finally started to call a spade a spade – in short, the Congressional bills are bans on TikTok.

The bills in question claim that TikTok is a major national security threat without any evidence whatsoever. What’s worse is that the lies are so blatant in the halls of Congress that they ignored the will of the people in the subcommittees and unanimously exited an outright ban on the platform out of committee.

A vote on these bills is planned for Wednesday in the House and possibly Friday in the Senate.

We all know that the tech-illiterate jerks on Congress doesn’t care one iota about harming small businesses or even the Constitution, they – along with the States – have shown again and again their complete contempt for the Internet and technology.

These bills, combined with Congress’s war on encryption, are a bigger national security threat than TikTok, which is actually banned in their native China by the Chinese government (yes, China is the world’s biggest censor – they ban platforms native to their own country).

Here is three things Congress can do right now to enhance our national security since they seem to all of a sudden care so much:

  1. End the war on encryption. Congress wants you to forget that they have bills that would allow for the US government to illegally spy on us by banning encryption on everything, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The so-called Kids Online Protection Act is one of the many zombie bills Congress has introduced since 2011 that would violate our right to privacy by banning encryption.
  2. Outlaw the production of backdoors on all devices sold in the US. This one is easy peasy, considering the fact that Chinese ODM Huawei was caught using backdoors on their smartphones to spy on people who attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain almost 13 months ago. This is one story that did not get the attention of US media outside of Android Central at the time. A proposal that would ban the production of backdoors would require the FCC, FTC and ICE to block the sale and importation of any device that has a backdoor in the US. Like I said before, I will say it again: the only people who want backdoors on our phones are our adversaries such as China. The same is true of the bills that ban encryption currently being considered in Congress.
  3. Ban the re-sale of any phone whose encryption has been compromised. I can’t believe this has to be said, but there is absolutely no excuse for any e-commerce retailer to be selling a phone whose encryption was compromised by law enforcement’s use of foreign software such as Pegasus. There is currently no way to determine if phones that were compromised by Pegasus were blocked from being on sale at sites like eBay. Congress needs to assure the public that phones whose encryption was compromised can never be resold on eBay or any other e-commerce platform.

There are some ways Congress can enhance our national security, but we all know the House will not even consider any of these proposals.

So, we must convince the Senate to stop the TikTok ban and end the 13-year war on encryption. Call their switchboard at (202) 224-3121 NOW.