This is part of Section H of H.R.815 that was signed into law:
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok;
(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
(iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
(B) a covered company that—
(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
(I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
(II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
(4) FOREIGN ADVERSARY COUNTRY.—The term “foreign adversary country” means a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code.
So, no, they don’t just get to change their name. They don’t get to change everything and still send data overseas to China. They have to cut ties with the CCP or else they cannot escape this.
I see. You’re right about the text of the law. Thanks for taking the time to post that.
I would say it violates the 1st Amendment then. US Citizens have a right to say what they want, which includes saying what China wants if that is what the person wants.
The courts will have to decide.
For the record, they’re not currently sending data to China. Though they’d probably only have to gently twist one or two arms and need about 12 hours to do so.
The company openly stores the data in China. Ex-employee Yintao “Roger” Yu, who was head of Engineering for all of ByteDance’s US Operations in 2017-2018, claims that the CCP had full immediate access to all collected data.
I’ve also heard the data is physically stored and hosted by Oracle. So maybe China just copies it? The primary copy is in the US currently. Which doesn’t really mean much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta’s data ended up in China too. But Congress isn’t targeting them.