The bipartisan moral panic over TikTok now looks like it will have official legislation to enforce its fears and censor what Americans can see and do on their devices because…China.
As CNBC reports:
[Sen. Mark] Warner [D-Va.] said he is working on the bill with Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., adding that he is concerned over the type of content that Americans are seeing on TikTok.
“They are taking data from Americans, not keeping it safe, but what worries me more with TikTok is that this can be a propaganda tool,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”
Warner's legislation comes after U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill that would grant President Joe Biden the authority to ban TikTok. The bill passed the Republican-controlled committee 24-16 along party lines, with unanimous GOP support and no Democratic votes.
Remember, folks: this is all about the children. Or something. Oh yeah – security. And propaganda. Never mind that this all looks and smells like a group of aging pols trying to ban something they neither use nor understand.
Just so long as we pay absolutely no attention to what credit card companies – who know more about everyone, everywhere, than all the world's mothers, priests and pollsters combined – have in store for people who legally purchase firearms. As Reason's J.D. Tuccille writes, the stated intent of assigning a specific merchant code to such purchases is to help law enforcement investigations of gun crimes. And some other stuff, of course:
Behind the push for the gun-specific merchant category code is Amalgamated Bank, which boasts that it “supports sustainable organizations, progressive causes, and social justice.” It's basically a political operation that uses its presence in the financial industry to advance political goals, and it joined with Democratic politicians to urge adoption of the new MCC. Why? Because at a time when everything is politicized, an ability to monitor buying and selling is enormously important to those who want to restrict or control whole areas of life.
“We all have to do our part to stop gun violence and it sometimes starts with illegal purchases of guns and ammunition,” Priscilla Sims Brown, president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank, gloated when the ISO approved the new category code last September. “The new code will allow us to fully comply with our duty to report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales to authorities without blocking or impeding legal gun sales.”
When the code was approved, firearms-specific payment firm GunTab warned that it was a step towards filing government-mandated Suspicious Activity Reports with the authorities on gun purchases.
You should read Tuccille's entire piece – not just because it illustrates the ends to which some intrusive and constitutionally suspect types of data collection are deemed essential to public safety while others are held up as an existential threat to our way of life.
Not that consistency is a hallmark of American civic life. Far from it. But just keep in mind that with every table-pounding call to stop TikTok, Big Tech, the boogeyman or whatever hobgoblin of the moment is stalking the earth…the state and its agents aren't just collecting your data, but doing so with the presumption you're guilty of a crime.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Who knew! Criminals and gang bangers use credit cards, primarily Discover, to buy their weapons. What a frickin revelation!
So, where is the outrage, not just from worthless politicians, but from Americans, about their Government reading their email, texts, social media posts, listening to phone calls, surveilling them with drones and satellites, tracking their cell phones and cars, viewing them through their TV and laptop cameras to name a few.
Beware of avowed enemy China for certain, but be very leery and mistrustful of an over powerful U.S. Federal Government
Yes, but not to excuse Slick Tok and other communist vehicles.
GET any device made in China GONE from the US
Any app A-Z
Start at TikTok but don’t stop there. Creeping, insidious Marxism comes in many forms and we must be vigilant as never before. Thin ends of the wedge are social justice, inclusion, political correctness, equality of outcome, gender fluidity, and on and on. These are all orchestrated by Chairman Xi’s Chink-a-zoids and his American Democrat slaves, apparently with impunity.