Category Archives: ethics

Disingenuosity

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Thy name is TikTok. India has banned TikTok along with a potful of other PRC apps on national security—cybersecurity—grounds. In response, TikTok’s CEO Kevin Mayer said that

Chinese authorities had never requested the data of their Indian users, and even if they had, the company wouldn’t comply.

Right.

“Never requested” is a cynically offered non sequitur. Not having been asked is entirely separate from never will be asked.

It’s more serious than that, though. The People’s Republic of China enacted a law in 2017 that requires all PRC-domiciled companies to comply with PRC intel community requests for information. Not “pretty please,” not “strongly encouraged.” It’s “stand and deliver, stand in violation of law.”

This past week, the PRC enacted an additional law, that while nominally aimed at Hong Kong, has the effect of fleshing out that 2017 law. This latest rule by law enactment tells the PRC government that it’s authorized to go outside the nation’s borders to enter other nations to arrest and bring to the PRC for trial those who violate or threaten PRC national security. Mayer’s pious claim that TikTok wouldn’t comply with such a request would be a clear violation—in PRC government eyes—and subject him and his staff to arrest and removal to the PRC.

Article 38 of that law specifically says this:

This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region.

Beijing has long said that Hong Kong is critical to the PRC’s national security—and that’s the PRC’s rationale for this additional law. From that, any company not complying with an intel request, by threatening PRC security, offends against Hong Kong.

Mayer knows that. He’s not an ignorant or oblivious man.

Cancelation

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There’s cancelation and there’s cancelation.

The Left is busily canceling folks and institutions over historical transgressions—nearby or old, real or perceived, major or minor—including canceling heroes of the fight to end slavery because they were flawed. Why, then, are they so studiously not working to cancel the symbols of the Democratic Party, the leaders and other prominent members of that party, and the party itself? After all, it’s the Democratic Party that

  • actively fought for slavery anti-bellum and created the KKK post-bellum
  • moved to enact gun control laws explicitly to keep blacks unarmed and helpless against continued depredations
  • enacted Jim Crow laws
  • resegregated the Federal government under Woodrow Wilson
  • refused to integrate the military under FDR
  • nationalized minimum wage laws explicitly to keep blacks from competing for jobs by being willing to work for less than white union members wanted to
  • created today’s “welfare” system that keeps blacks (and other poor) trapped in welfare cages
  • perpetuates racist segregation with their identity politics today
  • and on and on.

Oh, wait—that would mean the Left and the Party would have to cancel themselves.

Speech and Private Enterprise

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Some companies are reaching the conclusion that it’s become necessary to pull advertising from Facebook over the latter’s mishandling of speech, if in many cases they’re misapprehending the types of speech being abused.

The WSJ article at the link led off with this:

Facebook Inc said it would start labeling political speech that violates its rules and take other measures to prevent voter suppression and protect minorities from abuse.

Pick one. Suppressing political speech is suppressing voters.

Furthermore, Zuckerberg is hardly in a position to define “abuse;” his censorship is itself abuse.

There’s also this from a commenter in the article’s comment thread, which illustrates the breadth of the misunderstanding regarding free speech obligations:

Facebook is a private company, and platform. It can do as it pleases so long as you sign off on their terms and conditions agreement….

As a legal matter, sure. However, the principle underlying the injunction against Government abridging the freedom of speech is universal and applies to everyone. Zuckerberg knows this full well, and he knows further from that that he has a moral obligation to actively support free speech as well as to passively not abridge it.

His obligation is expanded by the size and control over political—and other—speech his Facebook has achieved and exercises.

An Independent DoJ

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Some pundits are complaining about a DoJ run by an Attorney General that is becoming a President Donald Trump ally rather than leading an independent Cabinet facility.

They’re misunderstanding, if not distorting, the situation.

These, for instance:

While those allies [of Attorney General William Barr] believe the attorney general’s actions are justified, they worry he is inviting excessive scrutiny that will undermine his agenda and do nothing to help the Justice Department’s already bruised morale.

Not at all. If the actions are justified, scrutiny—”excessive” or otherwise—is no excuse for not taking them.

In addition, if entrenched careerists in DoJ are unhappy with the changed corporate culture, they’re free to be unhappy on someone else’s payroll.

 

[Jonathan Turley said,] “This is a failure to consider the optics and impact of this type of announcement….”

This is not a failure at all. A major part of depoliticizing DoJ after the Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch depredations and the failures of the Jeff Sessions/Rod Rosenstein tenure is to take actions because they’re the right things to do, independently of “optics” or “impact of this type.”

 

Inside the Justice Department, Mr. Barr…is known for impatience when his orders aren’t quickly carried out.

Imagine that—insisting the Department move with all deliberate speed instead of the glacial pace of politics.

This is what independence looks like, and neither Progressive-Democrats nor deep-rooted bureaucrats like it.

Occupation by Remote Control

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Details of the People’s Republic of China’s overt takeover of Hong Kong via its new “security” law have been released by the government organ Xinhua News Agency. The high points, summarized by OANN, are these:

  • Hong Kong must establish a “local” national security council to enforce legislation, headed by the city’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam
    • to be supervised and guided by a new PRC commission specially created for the purpose
    • a PRC “adviser” will be a member of the council
  • New local police and prosecution units to be set up to investigate, enforce the new law
    • backed by PRC security and intelligence officers deployed to the new commission
  • Lam will have power to appoint judges to hear cases related to national security
    • bypasses existing judicial appointment procedures

Notice the supremacy of the PRC law over Hong Kong domestic law.

Notice, too, that those entities each have a Communist Party of China apparatchik embedded.