{"id":127914,"date":"2020-12-07T15:25:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T15:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/?post_type=news&p=127914"},"modified":"2025-11-27T20:13:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T20:13:19","slug":"internet-society-files-brief-arguing-u-s-wechat-ban-would-damage-internet-harm-users","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/news\/statements\/2020\/internet-society-files-brief-arguing-u-s-wechat-ban-would-damage-internet-harm-users\/","title":{"rendered":"Internet Society Files Brief Arguing U.S. WeChat Ban Would Damage Internet, Harm Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday 4 December 2020, the Internet Society, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy & Technology filed a brief of amici curiae in the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals<\/a> in the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance case. This case challenges the U.S. Department of Commerce’s September order<\/a>\u00a0banning U.S. businesses from engaging in certain kinds of technical transactions with WeChat or the WeChat application\u00a0(including providing hosting, content distribution, peering, and transit or using any of their software or services,\u00a0and\u00a0facilitating any of the these prohibited transactions).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Internet Society\u00a0has joined\u00a0<\/strong>other amici in this case to provide technical expertise\u00a0to support\u00a0the argument that the WeChat ban sets a dangerous precedent and would damage the Internet and harm its users.<\/p>\n

The ban would exacerbate\u00a0global fragmentation of the Internet by\u00a0restructuring how data is routed around the world. By prohibiting any security updates to WeChat software currently installed on devices of\u00a0some 19 million Americans, the\u00a0ban would\u00a0be\u00a0a grave\u00a0security risk not only for\u00a0these\u00a0WeChat users but\u00a0also\u00a0to the larger\u00a0Internet as these devices become ripe for compromise with malicious software.\u00a0This type of top-down intervention is\u00a0even more\u00a0worrisome because \u2013 similar to efforts\u00a0of authoritarian regimes like China\u2013 it tries to impose a centralized management style that runs counter to how\u00a0<\/strong>the Internet actually works<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This ban goes contrary to the United States\u2019 commitment to an open Internet.\u00a0The U.S. Administration\u00a0could have avoided this route\u00a0by\u00a0first trying\u00a0to understand how such actions\u00a0might\u00a0affect the Internet.\u00a0An Internet impact assessment<\/a>\u00a0is needed for any policy or regulation that could affect the Internet to make sure our actions don\u2019t break the foundation that makes it work for everyone.\u00a0\u00a0At a time where society is increasingly reliant on the connectivity and opportunity that an open Internet enables, this move\u00a0poses a significant risk of degradation and deterioration of the <\/strong>global Internet.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday 4 December 2020, the Internet Society, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy & Technology filed a brief of amici curiae in the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance case. This case challenges the U.S. Department of Commerce’s September order\u00a0banning U.S. businesses from engaging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[4898],"tags":[],"region_news_regions":[37],"content_category":[6082,6084],"class_list":["post-127914","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","category-strong-internet","region_news_regions-north-america","news_type-statements","content_category-news-type","content_category-statements-type"],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"square":false,"gform-image-choice-sm":false,"gform-image-choice-md":false,"gform-image-choice-lg":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Dan York","author_link":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/author\/york\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"On Friday 4 December 2020, the Internet Society, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy & Technology filed a brief of amici curiae in the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance case. This case challenges the U.S. Department of Commerce’s September order\u00a0banning U.S. businesses from engaging…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/127914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127914"},{"taxonomy":"region_news_regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region_news_regions?post=127914"},{"taxonomy":"content_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internetsociety.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_category?post=127914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}