The US government’s bi-partisan war on your right to publish embarrassing videos of yourself proceeds apace. As of March 6, Reuters reports, the White House is “working with Congress” on legislation that would give US president Joe Biden authority to pretend that he can ban TikTok.

As I’ve written before, I’m all in favor of banning government use of TikTok. And all other apps. And smart phones. And the Internet.

And as I’ve pointed out before, the idea of a general ban on TikTok for the American public is unconstitutional, stupid, insane, and evil.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t silver linings in this cloud of political idiocy.

The first and most easily foreseeable consequence of Congress passing such legislation, and Biden invoking its awesome alleged power, would be the reinvigoration of the “cypherpunk” phenomenon.

Within minutes of a general TikTok ban, every American Gen Zer — or at least every American Gen Zer who hadn’t already figured this stuff out for purposes of bypassing copyright to download obscure Japanese anime videos — would become a budding expert in “side-loading” apps onto smart phones, using Virtual Private Networks to go boldly where everyone went before the politicians said they couldn’t anymore, and just generally waving his, her, their or xir middle finger in Biden and Company’s faces.

A secondary consequence would be app developers increasingly catering to a growing user base interested in avoiding “walled gardens” like Google Play and the Apple App Store,  both because they’re vulnerable to stupid government censorship tricks like a TikTok ban, and because they’re inclined toward limiting developer/user relationships for their own reasons, even when not forced to do so by politicians.

And those two trends would, in turn, resuscitate the insanely great idea of the “Wild West” Internet, a golden age when users did what they darn well pleased — because they could, and because clueless politicians were powerless to stop them.

Which might conceivably even bring us to the Promised Land: The Internet as its own global super-jurisdiction, completely immune to political control by any regime for any reason. Politicians would be left with the choice of cutting “their” serfs off from the Internet entirely (and likely getting overthrown for it), or conceding that cyberspace isn’t, and isn’t ever going to be, their turf.

To steal an abbreviated Eastwoodism:  Do you feel lucky, politicians?

If so, as the not-very-old saying goes,  ____ around and find out.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, no stranger to finding himself under political fire, has been hunkering down beneath a new barrage after turning over 40,000 hours of US Capitol security camera footage (from the January 6, 2021 riot) to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.

“The speaker is needlessly exposing the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) whined. “The footage Speaker McCarthy is making available to Fox News is a treasure trove of closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected.”

But NBC News reports that, per a source with direct knowledge of the process, “the Jan. 6 committee worked with a Capitol Police representative to make sure the video would not pose a security risk if it were released to the public.”

The only thing wrong about this is that only Carlson has received the footage. But that’s a temporary problem.  “[H]e’ll have an exclusive,” McCarthy says, “then I’ll give it out to the entire country.”

On March 1, Tracy Walder — a former CIA and FBI employee —  clutched her (taxpayer-provided) pearls on MSNBC’s The ReidOut. “[A]s someone who served in Afghanistan, served my country and was in harm’s way,” she said, “I did not risk my life for something like this to happen.”

And then Walder got really weird: “But also, the way I look at this, strangely, is actually no different than what Edward Snowden did.”

That’s an interesting comparison.

Edward Snowden is probably the 21st century’s greatest American hero, driven into exile under threat of life imprisonment for exposing the crimes of agencies like those Walder worked for.

While McCarthy should find the comparison flattering, he isn’t putting his life or freedom, or even his job, at risk by doing the right thing here.

Nor is what he’s exposing the equivalent of what a cat does in the litter box and then tries to cover up, as were Snowden’s revelations.

He’s just releasing footage of  events that occurred in a public building and are of obvious public interest.

The US House of Representatives likes to refer to itself as “the People’s House.” There’s no particular reason why the Capitol building it works in should be treated as “only the Very Special Important People’s House.”

In fact, all areas of the Capitol building should be covered, 24/7, by cameras/microphones that anyone can access via Internet stream. Except the bathrooms. Let’s keep those audio-only, please.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On February 27, Reuters reports, the White House gave federal agencies a 30-day deadline to ensure that all government-owned devices are  TikTok-free.

The supposed, but seemingly evidenceless, reason: Because a Chinese company owns TikTok — a smart phone app for creating and sharing short videos — the Chinese government may be using  it to spy on Americans.

Well, OK. Ban TikTok from government devices.

But does that really go far enough?

Is TikTok the only app that gathers personal information and might be used by a government, any government, to spy on its users? Not even close.

If you don’t think the US government has been spying on you, using data generated by your phone, you haven’t been paying attention for at least the last decade.  In May 2013, now-exiled American hero Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the frightful extent of Washington’s domestic espionage operations.

If the goal is to protect the government, and the government alone, it’s appropriate to not just ban TikTok from government devices, but to ban government use of devices that could conceivably run TikTok or similar apps (including apps that install and run without the users’ knowledge).

No smart phones.

No Internet-connected computers.

No flash drives or cloud — data storage must be restricted to tightly-controlled media. Perhaps a version of the old 5 1/4″ floppy disk, with a security device embedded that goes off if someone attempts to leave a secure area with it.

Perhaps government should be limited to pen and paper, with everything encrypted using one-time pads generated by an army of monkeys rolling dice.

Hey, sounds good to me. Government does far too much, and all this modern technology facilitates its reach into areas of our lives where it has no business. So in addition to thwarting espionage, such a ban would benefit the rest of us, too.

But, regarding the rest of us:

US House Resolution 1153, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, would ban TikTok entirely. Not just for the US government, but for all Americans.

If you passed junior high school civics, you almost certainly know that the First Amendment to the US Constitution forbids Congress to make any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

TikTok is indisputably analogous to the printing press: It’s just a tool that lets you publish video. HR 1153 is, therefore, indisputably unconstitutional, not to mention stupid, insane, and evil.

If you fear the possibility of the Chinese Communist Party spying on you via TikTok, and don’t like that idea, remove TikTok from your phone (or don’t install it in the first place). “Problem” solved.

Or, one problem solved anyway. There’s still the problem of a technologically over-equipped US government trying to run all our lives.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY