According to TMZ:

Taylor’s husband didn’t provide a cause of death, but noted the plan is for her organs to be donated. He signed off by saying they weren’t able to financially prepare for the hardship that would come with her passing — linking to a GoFundMe for fans who are able to help.

Back in August, Taylor addressed the medical issues she had been facing — telling her followers she felt like she’s been “fighting for my life every day” … saying she was going through indescribable pain, sometimes wishing she was dead.

Deaths such as these have become more common since the rollout of the Covid-19 injections. While there is no way to know if she was “vaccinated” or if the jabs contributed to her death, it’s a question that is always worth asking. Corporate media certainly never asks.

One has to wonder about the true motives behind this blatant interference. When pretending to be Trump supporters, they’re obnoxious. When engaging with real Trump supporters, they’re threatening.

According to research reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, these Beijing-backed trolls are pushing divisive narratives on critical issues such as gun control, racial inequality, and the Israel-Hamas conflict. This is not just a casual online campaign; it’s a calculated effort to manipulate public opinion and sway the upcoming election in favor of their agenda.

Breitbart News has previously reported on TikTok’s troubling practices, revealing that the platform has sent sensitive user data about Americans—data that includes their opinions on gun control and abortion—straight to their Chinese overlords. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has now confirmed that TikTok employees communicate internally using a tool called Lark, claiming that “significant amounts of restricted US user data (including but not limited to personally identifiable information)” was shared on this platform. The DOJ further elaborates, stating, “This resulted in certain sensitive U.S. person data being contained in Lark channels and, therefore, stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees located in China.”

This raises a critical question: how can we trust a platform that so blatantly compromises American privacy and security? The Chinese propaganda machine is not just targeting former President Donald Trump; it has also set its sights on Vice President Kamala Harris and even President Joe Biden before he was ousted from his reelection campaign. The initiative is attributed to the notorious Chinese disinformation group, Spamouflage, as reported by the Associated Press.

Jack Stubbs, the chief intelligence officer at Graphika, stated, “One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations, an operation run by Chinese state-linked actors, has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and sway U.S. political conversations ahead of the election.” This is not just a minor issue; it’s a full-scale assault on our democratic processes.

The trolls are adopting fake identities to masquerade as U.S. voters, engaging in political debates online to control the narrative. One TikTok account, known as the “Harlan Report,” racked up an astonishing 1.5 million views on a single post. When pressed for their identity, the individual behind the account cryptically stated, “In your world, I am a clown. Sorry, You cannot know my identity, nobody ensure my safety.” This level of secrecy is deeply concerning and raises further questions about the integrity of the information being disseminated.

Following inquiries from the Wall Street Journal, TikTok took action and banned the Harlan Report account. However, a review of the account’s X profile revealed it had amassed 11,000 followers before being suspended from Elon Musk’s platform as well. The Harlan Report account posed as a 31-year-old conservative, complete with hashtags like #Patriotsunited, #MAGA, and Trump2024 in its bio.

Moreover, the Wall Street Journal uncovered that TikTok has been promoting “thousands of videos with political lies and hyperbole to its users.” One particular network of anti-Trump videos was traced back to a web of overseas accounts operating from China, Iran, and Vietnam.

While China, Russia, and Iran have denied any involvement in targeting U.S. voters through clandestine internet activities, it’s widely understood that foreign nations engage in online propaganda campaigns every election cycle. Earlier this summer, American spy agencies reported that Iran is actively seeking to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential race to prevent a second Trump term.

As we approach the 2024 election, it’s imperative that we remain vigilant against these politically motivated ploys. The integrity of our democracy is at stake, and we must question the motives behind these foreign interventions. Will we allow our political discourse to be hijacked by foreign actors, or will we stand up for the truth? The choice is ours.

(DCNF)—The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged on Friday that TikTok and its Chinese parent company collected sensitive data from their American users, according to court filings.

The DOJ alleged in court filings that TikTok had been collecting Americans’ user data on their views regarding sensitive topics like abortion, gun control and religion, arguing that the app poses a “potential threat to U.S. national security.” The DOJ’s latest filings follow a federal lawsuit TikTok filed in May after President Joe Biden signed legislation that gave the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, until January of 2025 to formally divest itself of the platform or risk a total ban in the U.S.

TikTok argued that the law, which required either a sale or a ban of the popular app, is a free speech violation for the 170 million American users, according to a statement in an X post on Saturday.

“The U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that ByteDance and TikTok pose a potential threat to U.S. national security because they could be used by the [People’s Republic of China] against the United States in two principal ways,” the most recent filing reads. “Malign foreign influence targeting U.S. persons, and collection of sensitive data of U.S. persons.”

The DOJ alleged in their most recent filing that TikTok and ByteDance allowed their employees to use software tools that allowed the app to collect user information and to censor certain content at the discretion of the Chinese-owned parent company.

“One of those tools allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion,” the filing reads. “Another tool contained policies that allowed both for the collection of bulk user information as well as the triggering of the suppression of content on the platform based on the user’s use of certain words.”

TikTok reiterated its view that the lawsuit is “unconstitutional” and that the DOJ has yet to provide “proof of its claims,” according to their statement on X.

“Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side,” TikTok said in a statement on X in response to the court filings. “The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the First Amendment.”

“As we’ve said before, the government has never put forth proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law,” TikTok said in the statement. “Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information. We remain confident we will prevail in court.”

The oral arguments for the case are scheduled for Sept. 16, according to the recent court filings.

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Congress apparently hopes to restructure TikTok by force of law. Wednesday the House passed a bill effectively banning the app. Meanwhile, Microsoft records every keystroke on every computer using its operating system and app software. Not only does it collect any data it wishes to collect, Microsoft reviews the user files, manipulates those files for Microsoft’s financial gain, and exposes everyone’s files to governments and to other private users.

Yet many in Congress are upset the Chinese are “poisoning young people’s minds.” Perhaps the Congress ought to apply a constitutional standard to everyone. That would mean we are safe in our homes and in our personal papers from unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom of the press is allowed to reign.

Microsoft defaults everything its software touches to OneDrive. Even if the user uninstalls the OneDrive software, the default persists. To file a document on your own computer, you must override OneDrive each and every time, and any attempt to add that same document in a second file defaults back to OneDrive.

OneDrive constantly searches your computer and any external storage devices. Proof of that is demonstrated by its overzealous “Memories of this day” self-promotion. OneDrive collects your personal photographs and randomly drops a few images into a formatted layout. Not only is this an egregious violation of one’s privacy, it is dangerous. Personal photographs are kept personal for reasons known only to the owner.

Microsoft is not protecting your pictures by only sending them to you. Often their “Memories of the day” includes people and photographs that are not in your storage files. Maybe some pervert somewhere is “enjoying” a photograph of your wife as you read this. Microsoft is promoting Microsoft using your photographs and the photographs of your neighbors or those of some Iranian. Who knows?

Let’s consider the obvious. Lots of people have been married more than once. As a consequence, there may be photo files of the ex-wife with children, so do we really want Microsoft constantly sending your spouse photographs of the ex-spouse? Do we want to take a tour of our neighbor’s private pictures courtesy of Microsoft? There may be a photograph in your file taken when you were more than 50 pounds overweight. You keep it as a reminder. Do you need it flashed across the world by a software company?

Another example of the one world controlled by Microsoft is the constant parade of pop-up boxes. A recent pop-up said it tracked the user and found its involuntary inquiries were not used. So it asked if it should be deleted. We are all happy to eliminate computer clutter, but why does Microsoft record and analyze every keystroke on every computer it controls in the world?

The most often heard rebuttal of this and other invasions of privacy is “I’ve got nothing to hide,” and that works until suddenly you do have something to hide, or at a minimum, not promote. That is when you realize you have no choice. It is up to Microsoft … or the government. Microsoft, Google and others have designed a system for their benefit, not yours.

The spectacle of Congress berating TikTok and the Communist Party of China while we allow American companies to steal the same information at will, is offensive. But the legal precedent is important. First control TikTok.

Before we go all self-righteous over TikTok and propaganda aimed at children, let’s look at the propaganda we routinely allow.

After the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, there was a dramatic shift in television advertising content. Suddenly, it seemed 90% of the actors hired to perform in advertising were black. Homosexual couples in sexual embrace were common, and obese women were preening and bouncing about enthusiastically. The only time a white male actor lands an advertising gig, it is to play the idiot to the ever-suffering, eye-rolling woman in his life. She, of course, will be laboring over a hot computer while he stands before her, spatula in hand, awaiting her dinner order.

There it is. The entire Democrat Party social agenda paraded every 10 minutes on every channel as the epitome of American life. Demur and you are evil, wicked, bad and nasty.

So Congress is going to save us from China’s TikTok – but who is going to save us from the Advertising Council? Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was all in to pass the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

OK. But America is drowning in propaganda of its own making.

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So the fate of the platform is very much up in the air.  170 million Americans have accounts on TikTok, and 7 million small businesses use the platform.  Needless to say, there are vast hordes of young people that are extremely upset about what Congress is trying to do, and lots of them will be voting in November.

It was apparent that this bill had a tremendous amount of support, but I was surprised that so many lawmakers from both parties ended up voting for it…

The House on Wednesday passed legislation that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell its stake in the massively popular social media platform.

The vote was 352 in favor and 65 opposed, underscoring its broad bipartisan support, with 197 Republicans and 155 Democrats voting to approve it. Fifteen Republicans and 50 Democrats voted against the bill. One Democrat voted “present.”

If you have not read the bill yet, you can find it right here.  Prior to the vote, TikTok users absolutely flooded Congress with phone calls, but that didn’t work. So now countless TikTok influencers are completely freaking out because the future of their favorite platform is very much in doubt…

Describing herself as a ‘panicked influencer’ in a video with almost 250K likes, one creator said: ‘We might have to part our ways and say farewell tomorrow because what the actual freak?’

Others noted the rare efficiency that Congress showed in passing the legislation, with one TikTok user saying it stands out compared to the ‘months and months to even get aid to people when there’s a hurricane.’

‘Somehow the gremlins in Congress just really got together and finally agreed on something.’

Another prominent influencer boldly proclaimed that “THIS is going to be the reason why I hate the federal government”…

‘When I’m old an miserable and telling my grandkids about all the reasons why I hate the world, THIS is going to be the reason why I hate the federal government,’ another influencer fumed.

According to CNN, if this bill actually becomes law TikTok will disappear from app stores in the U.S. if ByteDance chooses not to divest…

If enacted, the bill would give TikTok roughly five months to separate from ByteDance, or else app stores in the United States would be prohibited from hosting the app on their platforms.

App stores that violate the legislation could be fined based on the number of users of a banned app. The bill establishes fines of $5,000 per user of a banned app. So, in the case of TikTok, Apple and Google could potentially be on the hook for up to $850 billion in fines each.

It’s unclear if ByteDance would agree to sell or spin-off TikTok. If it did, the company could struggle to find an American buyer willing to shell out, despite the app’s popularity.

TikTok is worth an estimated $100 billion, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. And many major US tech companies already face fierce regulatory scrutiny that could prevent them from making such a major acquisition.

But of course even if TikTok was banned from app stores that would definitely not kill the platform.

The 170 million users that have already downloaded the app would still be able to use it, and new users would likely be able to download it using a VPN…

If TikTok were banned in the U.S., the hundred million plus users who have already downloaded the app would still likely be able to access it. New users would also potentially be able to download it using a virtual private network, or VPN.

Even with the app’s removal from app stores and experts expect that TikTok’s resourceful U.S. fans would still find ways to continue using it.

And at this point it is very unclear whether this bill will be able to get through the U.S. Senate…

The TikTok’s bill in the Senate is uncertain, as the Senate is unlikely to pass the bill as is.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said, “I think it’s more than likely that we will take up their bill and amend it and say we’ve come up with some areas where we think it needs improvement. My concern is that if you try to deal with this by name, you’re playing a game of Whack a Mole, because what’s TikTok today, next week it’s TokTik or TicTak or whatever.”

“We do things slowly over here, and this takes time,” he added.

Indeed, the Senate’s 60-vote threshold requires consensus to pass legislation.

Joe Biden has said that he will sign the bill if it eventually gets through the Senate.

But would he really want to alienate millions of young voters just before the presidential election in November?

Donald Trump seems to realize what will be better for his political future, and so he has come out against banning TikTok…

Former President Donald Trump came out against the app’s ban.

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

“I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!” the 45th president said.

I think that Trump makes a legitimate point.

Without a doubt, TikTok is doing a tremendous amount of damage.

For a long time, TikTok has been promoting very harmful content. And for a long time, TikTok has been suppressing content that many of us would consider to be good.

TikTok clearly has an agenda, and they are using their power to shape how our young people think. But of course the exact same things could be said about other social media platforms.

It could be argued that Facebook has had a far greater impact on our culture than TikTok has, but nobody is talking about banning Facebook. Collectively, the major social media companies are transforming our culture in ways that we have never seen before.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. According to a brand new Gallup survey that was just released, 22.3 percent of all Gen Zers now identify as LGBTQ+…

More than one in five Gen Z adults identified as LGBTQ+ in 2023, having more than doubled over less than a decade.

Of the 22.3 percent of Gen Zers identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, more than 15 percent identified as bisexual, according to polling results from Gallup.

Pollsters reported that, overall, each younger generation is about twice as likely as the last to identify as LGBTQ+. Compared to the rate of Gen Z adults, far fewer millennials – one in 10 – say they belong to the LGBTQ+ community.

In the entire history of our country, we have never seen a shift of this magnitude.

At this point, nearly 30 percent of Gen Z women now identify as LGBTQ+…

“Almost 30% of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ+, most as bisexual,” Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told NBC News. “That’s where a lot of the growth seems to be happening.”

This is the first year Gallup has laid out its annual LGBTQ identification report in a way that breaks down each generation by gender. Looking at all generations, 8.5% of women and 4.7% of men identified as LGBTQ, the survey found.

If you ban TikTok, that is barely going to do anything to stop the cultural tsunami that we are witnessing.

For many of our politicians, the reason why TikTok is such a big deal is because it is controlled by China.

This just shows how much things have changed.

For many years, I have been warning my readers that China is our enemy.  A decade ago, most people thought that was absurd.  Over and over again I would be told that “China is our friend” and that a war with the Chinese would never happen.

But now most of our politicians clearly believe that China is our enemy.  If they considered China to be a friend, there is no way that they would be trying to ban TikTok.

Relations between the United States and China are rapidly deteriorating, and it won’t be too long before they reach a breaking point.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

It then proceeded to strategically highlight how totally American it is with all its American employees and American users and the American businesses that use it! The irony, of course, being that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, and has been continuously accused of violating the privacy of its users pretty much from its inception. Accusations it denies despite ever-growing evidence to the contrary.

According to the company itself:

This milestone coincides with a critical period for TikTok. Certain politicians have raised concerns about the potential banning of our platform, which would directly affect all 150 million Americans who have embraced TikTok. To proactively address US national security concerns, we’ve taken unprecedented steps by enhancing safeguards for our US users. Over the last two years, we’ve invested $1.5 billion in setting up TikTok US Data Security and have been building a comprehensive framework to isolate protected US user data. Today, we are also proud to launch the U.S. Data Security (USDS) site aimed at providing transparency into our commitments and answering common questions around our efforts to safeguard data.

Unfortunately (for China), American voters aren’t buying it, according to a recent poll by RMG Research which was shared exclusively with the Daily Signal.

A majority of voters view TikTok as a threat to the United States. An even higher percentage favor a federal ban of the social media app, according to @RMG_Research’s poll. https://t.co/ymhEzg0QDC

— Rob Bluey (@RobertBluey) December 21, 2023

This is welcome news considering a recent poll from Pew Research Center which shows that 14% of adults in the United States regularly get news from TikTok, a number that increases to 32% for adults between the age of 18 and 29. And those numbers are only growing.

Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center, Kara Frederick, claims that the Chinese government uses TikTik to harvest American user data and then exploits it for their own benefit.

According to the Daily Signal:

What to do about it? Frederick concluded the federal government should impose a wholesale ban on TikTok in the United States.

The new poll found 54% of American voters agree with the recommendation. The number jumps to 58% when respondents were asked if TikTok could be used by Chinese government to interfere in U.S. elections.

Regardless of if TikTik can be, should be, or will be banned, and to what extent, I think it’s obvious to any Americans with a bit of sense that we shouldn’t be using it.

For the record, I’ve been exceedingly critical of the roles both Israel and the United States have played in allowing the terrorist attacks. I’m not one who blindly accepts the official narrative and I know that the Deep State in both countries are involved in what’s happening. Clearly, there are many agendas in play right now and none of them are beneficial to us.

Anti-Zionist and Anti-Semitic hatred has been building up ever since October 7 across college campuses and the streets of America. Protests are getting larger and louder. Wednesday night, the Decolonization Death Cult rioted in Washington DC, attempting to storm the DNC Headquarters.

Now, an article posted by The Guardian in 2002 has reemerged and is taking TikTok by storm. The so-called “Letter to America” written by 9/11 terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden is going viral with tens of millions of views accumulated between multiple influencers. Here’s a compilation video of these influencers instructing their sheep to go read it. This is, of course, a coordinated campaign by the Decolonization Death Cult.

The article has since been removed by The Guardian. According to The Post Millennial:

On Wednesday, The Guardian removed a letter written by Al-Queda founder Osama Bin Laden that had been published on its website for more than 20 years. This comes as the hashtag #lettertoamerica was viewed on TikTok over 10 million times.

TikTokers, many of them American, found the letter and began to share it. As they did so, they expressed their agreement with the letter. The letter was published in British news outlet The Guardian in 2002, after the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, which killed over 3,000 people. As they read the letter, steeped in the oppressor/victim worldview, they find themselves agreeing with bin Laden’s assessment that the US, and Israel, are responsible for attacks on their own nations. One American TikToker said the letter gave her an “existential crisis” and she will never look at the US the same again.

Watching the video’s compiled makes two things crystal clear. First, there is zero doubt the videos were coordinated. These influencers didn’t suddenly read the article and come up with the exact same talking points on their own in a matter of hours. Second, this marks a very dangerous turn in the situation, especially here in the United States, because it justifies terrorism as righteous to those participating in the “Free Palestine” movement, which I now refer to as the Decolonization Death Cult.

For years we’ve been warning about the infiltration of the United States by terrorists at our southern border. Those warnings have hit overdrive since Joe Biden opened the borders, but they continue to go unheeded. We know that terrorists are here on American soil to the tune of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. What many of us didn’t expect is that they’d be able to build their terrorist army with support from Americans through the current indoctrination campaign. Maybe some saw it coming, but I missed it until now.

There are spirits of disillusionment, delusion, and anger spreading across America. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any solutions other than continuing to spread the truth, becoming increasingly diligent, and a whole lot of prayer. Just as Daniel prayed for his nation ceaselessly, so too must we pray for our nation as it plunges down a very dark hole. Stay frosty, friends.

Sound off about this development on my Substack.

The latest version of the story surrounds Lorenzo Delle Femmine, a TikTok star with nearly 2 million followers. He was 40-years-old when he had a heart attack while playing with his kids at home.

According to the NY Post:

Italian influencer Lorenzo Delle Femmine died from cardiac arrest on Monday. He was 40 years old.

The beloved TikTok personality’s wife, Assunta, who’s often seen in his videos that chronicle their family life, confirmed the heartbreaking news in an Instagram post.

“I feel so bad. I can’t believe it,” she wrote in Italian on the day of his passing.

Delle Femmine — who is better known as Mister Pella Pazzo to his 1.8 million followers on TikTok — was playing with their three kids at the family’s home near Naples, Italy, when he started to feel sick.

He then fell to the ground and remained motionless, according to La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper.

The outlet reports that Delle Femmine was quickly taken to the hospital, but was pronounced dead shortly after his arrival.

Stories like these are heartbreaking. When lives end too soon, especially when there is close family in the picture, it’s a true shame. But since the release of the Covid jabs, these stories are becoming more common.

While prominent Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates have supported banning TikTok, which is linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through its parent company ByteDance, Scott has opted for a less aggressive approach and has not called for fully banning the app. At the same time, one of the main investors in ByteDance, as well as the executive chairman and founder of Oracle, which stores TikTok’s American data, both contributed large sums to organizations supporting Scott.

Jeffrey Yass contributed $600,000 to Opportunity Matters Fund Action, a political organization that is aligned with and supports Scott, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data. Yass’ investment firm Susquehanna International Group bought a significant stake in ByteDance in 2012, while his personal stake of 7% is valued at around $21 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“I’ve supported libertarian and free market principles my entire adult life,” Yass told the WSJ. “TikTok is about free speech and innovation, the epitome of libertarian and free market ideals. The idea of banning TikTok is an anathema to everything I believe.”

Yass is a major contributor to the Club for Growth, a conservative organization that mobilized Republican resistance to banning TikTok, according to the WSJ. He has given $61 million to the organization’s political spending division since 2010, which accounts for nearly one-fourth of its overall funding.

Opportunity Matters Fund, Inc., a PAC that also backs Scott, has received over $30 million in contributions since 2020 from Oracle Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, according to FEC data. Oracle has a contract with TikTok to store the company’s American data. Scott called Ellison one of his “mentors” in May when he launched his presidential campaign.

In response to questions by the Daily Caller News Foundation on whether Scott would support a TikTok ban, his campaign declined to call for one. Instead, it shared Scott’s comment that he has “no problem whatsoever” with a TikTok ban, which he stated in an August Fox News interview.

Though Scott did not call for banning TikTok in the interview, or promise to do so if elected, Scott advocated for a plan to separate American children’s data from the CCP.

“We have to separate or segregate the communist Chinese party from our kids’ data,” Scott said in the interview. “We have to stop them from spying on our kids.”

However, China hawks have criticized Scott for his stance on TikTok when compared to other top Republican presidential candidates, according to Politico.

Other candidates, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, have all indicated support of a nationwide ban. However, Ramaswamy recently appeared to walk back his hard-line stance on TikTok.

“In retrospect, it was a little bit of an old-fashioned decision to say that there’s an entire mode of communicating with young people that I was going to turn off,” Ramaswamy said.

Former President Donald Trump also attempted to ban TikTok, but was stymied by federal courts. Scott cited such legal difficulties in his August Fox interview as evidence that “we can’t ban TikTok.”

DeSantis also received $2.5 million from Yass in February, according to data from his Florida PAC, which was named Friends of Ron DeSantis at the time. Yass has not contributed to Never Back Down, a federal PAC supporting DeSantis’ 2024 presidential bid.

Scott has backed more moderate solutions to potential national security concerns raised by TikTok, including voting to ban TikTok on government devices, and introducing a bill called the Know Your App Act to require applications to disclose what country they originate from.

China is using TikTok to spy on our children and invade their privacy. My Know Your App Act gives parents the tools they need to keep the CCP out of their homes and protect their kids.

— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) July 20, 2023

The Biden administration plans to resume negotiations with TikTok despite its previous ultimatum that ByteDance must sell its stake in the company or face a potential ban, The Washington Post reported. The Beijing-based company maintains an internal CCP committee, and the U.S. Department of Justice characterized ByteDance as a “mouthpiece” for the CCP.

A former ByteDance executive has alleged that CCP members within the company had a “superuser” credential or “god credential” that enabled them to view all of the data the company obtained, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company also had a “backdoor channel” to gain U.S. user data, the former executive asserted.

ByteDance employees also used TikTok data to spy on American journalists who were covering the company in 2022, Forbes reported. Additionally, TikTok stored American TikTok creators’ and businesses’ financial information such as Social Security numbers and tax IDs in China, according to records obtained by Forbes.

Oracle, Susquehanna, TikTok and ByteDance did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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But, as Murray Rothbard has pointed out, “human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory.” Your freedom to have an opinion does not grant you the right to express that opinion in venues or on media outlets you do not own. But if you pay to give a speech at a lecture hall and the government blocks it, this violation of free speech could be better understood as a violation of property rights. So how would property rights fare under the RESTRICT Act? Not well. The bill would not only block private companies from engaging in legitimate business practices but would further violate the property rights of American citizens and companies through an open-ended digital surveillance regime.

The RESTRICT Act seeks to give the Commerce Department broad new authorities to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, and mitigate” information and communications technology products “in which any foreign adversary has an interest, and that pose an undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security or the safety of U.S. persons.” The bill defines foreign adversaries as China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, but it allows the Executive to add and drop foreign regimes from the list without oversight from Congress.

The information and communications technology products highlighted in the act are expansive and unspecific. They range from desktop applications, mobile apps, web-based applications, payment platforms, and gaming systems to webcams, Wi-Fi networks, drone cameras, home surveillance systems, and even biotechnology.

It’s worth mentioning that the only real threat the alleged adversarial regimes pose is to Washington’s ability to exert military control over the entire globe. The root of this issue lies in America’s overzealous foreign policy aspirations—not in some irrational wish by these regimes to see American people harmed. The proper way to address these threats is to bring American foreign policy back in line with reality as Washington’s unipolar moment slips away. The RESTRICT Act ignores the root of the problem and instead attacks the rights of the American people.

Our right to property stems first from our right to self-ownership. We alone own our bodies. Any property claim made on our bodies is unethical and impossible. From self-ownership, property can be attained justly through homesteading—mixing one’s labor with unowned land resources. After property has been homesteaded, it can be justly transferred through gifts or voluntary exchange. That is how most property is justly acquired in modern societies.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfectly libertarian world. But property rights are still important and, to the extent they exist, must be defended. As such, if a someone wishes to read, watch, or listen to a foreign government—maybe they want to hear both sides of a geopolitical dispute to be better informed—and a website owner is willing to deliver that piece of media to them, it is completely within the rights of both the consumer and website owner to engage in that transaction.

Further, it is the right of those who own the internet service provider, data center, and optical fiber cables to make part of their infrastructure available for the information transfer if they find the price to be worth it. Even if the information originated from or encountered a foreign regime, any third party stepping in to stop this transaction would be violating the right of the individuals involved to control their own property.

The conduct that the RESTRICT Act seeks to prohibit is not a real crime. And beyond that, the state surveillance of private activity necessary to identify the relevant transactions is where the majority of property rights violations will occur. The bill makes numerous references to the use of information gathered by the director of national intelligence. Although we’re told US intelligence agencies focus on gathering information and conducting operations outside of the United States, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that agencies such as the National Security Agency conduct mass surveillance of American’s communications. The RESTRICT Act could ratchet this up by extending the surveillance beyond communications to include digital information of any kind. By accessing devices without express permission, the federal government would further violate our property rights.

There is even more of concern. With its vague language, the bill gives the government much leeway in defining what qualifies as illegal information. We’ve already seen government officials and their friends in media conflate antiestablishment arguments with foreign disinformation. They’ve even falsely labelled accurate news stories as foreign disinformation. It’s not hard to see these same people using the powers granted to them by the RESTRICT Act to criminalize certain dissenting views under the guise of counterintelligence.

This awful bill seeks to prop up Washington’s disappearing global military dominance by making certain pieces of digital information illegal. The implementation of the RESTRICT Act would violate the American people’s basic right to control their property—all in the name of thwarting a fake crime. The bill isn’t protecting you from a threat. It is the threat. Don’t fall for it.

About the Author

Connor O’Keeffe is a writer and video producer at the Mises Institute. He has a masters in economics and a bachelors in geology.

Article cross-posted from Mises.