[Chapter-delegates] TikTok Ban. How should ISOC respond?

[Dave Burstein]

170 million Americans use TikTok, Facebook's only major international
competitor. T*his is the largest Internet blockage in Western history.* The
proponents—and the court—believe it is a major security problem that
justifies blocking the Internet.

(Because we have a strong, clear position on the issue - below - this note
should have come from the Chair or CEO. But maybe it's good for the
chapters to take the lead more often.)

>From the *Times: *TikTok Faces U.S. Ban After Losing Bid to Overturn New Law
The law will ban the video app in the United States by Jan. 19 if its
owner, ByteDance, does not sell it to a non-Chinese company.
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Conveniently, we have almost nothing of substance planned at Wednesday's
board meeting. We can spend several hours discussing what ISOC's policy
should be.

ISOC took a strong position on this issue in 2023.
https://www.internetsociety.org/news/statements/2023/specific-app-and-service-bans-are-fragmenting-the-internet/


Is it possible for the Internet Society to take action when the problem is
our home country?
Ted, Sally - can our pr department put together a press call on zoom to
address this openly and transparently?

Here's our 2023 statement. It's very clear and to the point.

Specific App and Service Bans are Fragmenting the Internet
Increasing government actions to block or ban specific web services or
applications are fragmenting the Internet.

Because of how the Internet works, top-down interference with specific
services and technologies on the Internet will likely damage interoperation
and tend to splinter the Internet into smaller, less-connected islands.

As the Internet and the services on it become more important, people
increasingly depend on them. ...

Some governments claim their actions are necessary for national
security–when citizen use of some applications or services could lead to
wide scale theft of personal data, exposure of national security assets, or
creation of numerous in-country landing points for a widespread
cybersecurity attack, among other risks. But the idea that these risks are
somehow unique to a particular application or service is poorly founded:
the same attacks could be as easily embedded in another permitted
application. Since the Internet is such a flexible technology, any
necessary defense of national security has to come from preventing the
attacks *no matter how* they come from the Internet. National security that
supposedly comes from banning a particular application is a security
blanket made entirely of holes.

Governments should avoid service or applications specific bans, which
undermine security and access to opportunities on the world’s greatest
communications resource. Instead of banning a particular platform or
application based on non-technical criteria
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7754> like country of origin or
ownership, countries should be transparent about risks and raise the
privacy and security standards for *all* online services and app stores to
mitigate broader potential threats to critical infrastructure and services
from end-user devices.

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(It's particularly important for the Chair to get involved. The last time
this came up was when the chapters asked ISOC to take a position on the
cutoff of Internet service in Gaza and the chair was asked to comment. The
board has a fiduciary responsibility it shouldn't duck.)
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