(2023-02-27) Banning Tiktok Schneier On Security

Bruce Schneier: Banning TikTok. Congress is currently debating bills that would ban TikTok in the United States. We are here as technologists to tell you that this is a terrible idea and the side effects would be intolerable. Details matter. There are several ways Congress might ban TikTok, each with different efficacies and side effects. In the end, all the effective ones would destroy the free Internet as we know it.

If we want to address the real problem, we need to enact serious privacy laws, not security theater, to stop our data from being collected, analyzed, and sold—by anyone

All of these proposed solutions raise constitutional issues as well

If we want to get serious about protecting national security, we have to get serious about data privacy. Today, data surveillance is the business model of the Internet.