Hi anthony ok youre watching the stream home edition can we chat well apparently not for very much longer in the United States the hugely popular chinese car. Has been deemed a National Security threat alongside to talk we will impact whats behind president chants and in todays show and if you want you to be part of the conversation as well put your comments in the new cheap comments and you too could be in the state. And looking forward to hearing from these guess i will say hello to the guest the guests were introduced themselves to you and im kidding tell everybody here hi my name is ken well and im a reporter for the South China Morning Post im based in hong kong and i cover Chinese Foreign policy and china u. S. Relations im also a host for the f. M. P. Podcast inside china which runs on chinas hot topics every week good to have not you welcome back to the same remind i guess our audience who you are going to judge. Much like a researcher for Human Rights Watch i write some research on it human rights issues in china im based in new york good to have you and i know times what does our audience need to know about you. My name is times writer and lawyer based in virginia and im working on a series of lawsuits against each other on behalf of us we chat users get to have a nice to see you or if you guess if youre a new chief you can jump into the conversation right away but lets start 1st of all with we chat what he does when people say we are some of our Online Community to explain it and this is what they told us peoples life in china is controlled by we chat thats like the singles are more important communication tools they have even played games so if you want to is message down or know anything about them you have to get on the chair now the reason why i use wheelchair and probably also the same reason as to what i use the most for is to really keep in touch with my family in china it is the most popular social media app and the easiest way to stay connected with them since facebook and instagram are there and in china i use it for work or to a group chat well miss out on important. Or. I use many shops and the we chat while its a chance for money or just to shop is one of the few hours that are multiple in both china and the u. S. And we essentially use this app to butte our own Chinese Community in the u. S. Or all around the world thats a pretty comprehensive description of for me china is how people use it for disclosure i guess hands up who has we chat on one of the. The lawyer hes prosecution does not reach out on his word all right that makes sense. No surprise maybe you know something the 2 other guests do not know killing 1st of all the impact. In the us. To be to explain so so us president dont trump who launched an executive order on august the 6th saying that we here our court from the executive or the collects data that threatens. Access the allow the Chinese Communist party to access to americans personal and proprietary information and you as government also quote it that we chat launches this Information Campaign and censor is content on the platform and therefore there is the band that trump announced and. As to how exactly trump is going to ban the app from operating in the u. S. For example sloshy i know the executive order it was worth it rather fake that any transactions that is related to reach at any personal and property that is within the u. S. Jurisdiction also with the Mother Company if we had had such a bad and a period of 45. 00 days is given until the order comes into effect that will be september 20th. You have on your. Why do you use it what we have when you can no longer have it all yourself. Well i have to false so as we check doesnt because i dont know we chat in terms of security but i have to use we chat because thats part of my job and also our my entire family are in china i have to. Eat whats going on the news from weight shut up because i research in a humorous issue so people post about you know what they see and when we are in which we got to the Chinese Governments arrest renovations on the other hand as i said in my family is in china so i contact my family and friends to egypt but as i said you know i dont trust its security so i have a follows as well do you know what exactly do you not trust about security archie. First of all i its well knowledge that it will check sensors also with him Something Else so i dont know to what extent that we can extract information from just by virtually having the app on my phone so i want to make sure that it is isolated for the rest of. It since i do with my phone. Times come into the conversation here i want to share this with you on you tube as well shaquille says chunk just wants to highlight the media against china in order to persuade the americans to vote for him is this a political move or is this something nefarious about what we charge if its an act on your times. So i think the real problem is not we chat or any particular app its a great firewall makes we chat an issue and its in fact the one the one way nature of the great firewall so information can obviously exit china propaganda information fairly to the Chinese Government. But even if were sitting here in the u. S. Using we chat and we want to discuss topics that are critical of the Chinese Government sitting here in region near new york d. C. We would be unable to do that are over reach at and so to me you know this is why i wrote the piece in the Washington Post i think targeting wheelchair is. This is the the Bigger Picture. And the reason we couldnt discuss what if we want to definitely chant is because the app has a sensor in it so if there are woods that might pop in an algorithm for instance those words can be senses and you could send a message to your friends and yeah those protests in home come whats happening about them he said peaches his myth nation that music may know at the get your friend your friend will never know that that message has been censored or interrupted in any way a killing tell us a little bit more about the. Right apart from we had basically all our chinese social media platforms and including websites that allowed and the chinese internet are subjected to a strict law by the Chinese Government that essentially censors out all things all content that are deemed politically sensitive or damed accusations or criticisms against the Central Government on its end to that so i believe this is part of the Bigger Picture of what we shipped back to to. You know i have to share this with you because you have on your phone so leslie is watching right now and there leslie are i love your comment wow we chat sounds amazing just so much it always feels like it can totally run your life. So if e. T. Shacked sounds from the u. S. What to people who use it in the u. S. Will today use. Well its very interesting because you know i work with human rights activist and lawyer writers in china a lot of them cant use weight checks why because in order to have a recheck cons you have to register your id you know that stuff and the governor has good job about it and those people you know like the government and government has been you know harassing and sobering them so even trying to get out we checked because the governors are one of them. So you know they have you know developed their or find or trying to. Get each other in to also check with me signal is not banned in china so you can right now its easy its and the people are students were asked by having a v. P. N. Its cover some its had it but you can still do it this has been cruelly by many people who dont come which in your we dont dissuade say because the government doesnt like them or because they wanted to speak freely and without the surveillance by the so you can see is that what you actually you can show that there are workarounds his hes present trump in august in a press conference where the press is talking about well this thing does a lot of stuff are you not concerned that it will impact americans who are using it and he says how he reacted has taken this. Theres a lot of American Companies by your own or with apple or disney theyre worried because its such a big arm and arm in china that if you ban u. S. Business this morning that these people sell you know i phones or. Whatever so you know why if there were. Security. Weve been very very let down by general which. Times would you make of that we actually received chumpy was basically at every. It was a problem with the idea. Which you know could only really be done by you know prohibiting americans from using recherche is that it would almost certainly you know violation of the 1st that the. You know people you know the 1st amendment protects the right to speak in favor of the Chinese Government if you want and there are i know that there are already. Lawyers here in the Chinese Community who are planning to sue the administration. Over over the bed and you know as much as i have misgivings about i think we have a very strong argument that anything it would be unconstitutional. That were getting a sense from from the you coming through here that there is a back and forth about china what china does what america does th i. C. C. Thank you feel your thoughts in china did the same thing to other Foreign Companies so it is fair if the us to bank chinese apps killing children with em. I think an important context and understanding chats rise to popularity inside of china and also among chinese. Overseas is that the Chinese Government in the past 2 years has banned most of western developed social media platforms including face spoke. And therefore as mentioned by some of the into freeways at the beginning of the shelf this has become the only channel or one of the few channels that has allowed Chinese People within the country and those who have business in china or those families in china to stay in touch and basically that that is an important context that we should keep in mind. Actually let me play you this comment from the sexiest state of the us might pump have to keep out why he feels we chat should not be available in the us civil list we want to see untrusted chinese apps removed from us abstainers President Trump as mentioned impending action on tech talk and for good reason with Parent Companies based in china apps like to talk we chat and others are significant threats to person that of american citizens not to mention tools for c. C. P. Content censorship. Go ahead im not disregard me in the 1st amendment concern as we spent arising from banning i kind of her you know pos concern in terms of security but of course i mean you know the chinese solution has other arent your area political motives in terms of furriner taking on we tend to talk about in terms of surveillance and censorship its you know. I would say not a lot of chinese immigrants particularly the 1st generation twentys immigrants in us they are often exclusively using weights at talk to each other even they live in the us some of them are u. S. Citizens so to a large extent you know what they say in the u. S. What. Youre transparent it to the chance government i mean you know what the Chinese Companies can do utilize export about kind of. You know. For their own purposes this is a concern of these you know true. Times times over yeah youre going to times. I wholeheartedly share the security could serve as we chat and the one way nature of the great firewall which frankly i think is more accurately described as a great reality distortion filter. Are real threats are real threats to Democratic Values and to National Security even are real especially because i think the effect of this kind of silo information ecosystem is to make support for the conus party as support for authoritarianism generally are higher than it otherwise would be but you know we we live in an open society we live in a society that has the 1st amendment and there are costs to sticking with those principles and one of them is that we need to find other ways of dealing with threats than just burning them and in a forthcoming peace and or a policy my coauthor and i are the Washington Post piece will be laying out a series of. Policies that we think are more constitutionally sound and more will be strategically more effective than in a simple. Oh lets just drop in here to you cheap again this is septimius i septimus thanks for your comment the us is on decline it is scared of chinas tech more Technological Progress it is food officially trying to ban all chinese tech because it wants to keep its premises killing. So i have been covering on china u. S. Relations and the tension between us and china has gone way beyond just us spending the 2 apps some researchers call it an all front tension where u. S. And china have clashes over human rights issues and military issues in conflict areas such as the sub china sea and also on trade and we are seeing this ban on we chat and tech talk actually which has come in the pairing accepted of order. On august the 6th where when the band on which was launched they spends on chinese mobile apps sometimes esteemed as a new front in the us china trade war where in the past 2 years we have seen the 2 countries raising on for example chip making technology and also 5 g. Networks to follow meant and these all fall into a Bigger Picture of deteriorating relations so the c. E. O. s office of station perhaps is addressing to this big attention that we are seeing around the world and only this week Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs spoke about the coming to talk. And this is how they are honest it so lets. Move. Some u. S. Politicians made a murderous attack on chinese like to talk. In Chinese Companies like. The root cause is that they harbor hostility towards anything related to china and are attempting to impose ideological labels on Chinese Companies. These people are hunting to talk and other Chinese Companies under the guise of National Security and are full of lies and slander which are in essence bullying who me. So the times we see it as it is is a larger issue between the u. S. And china in terms of nations but if we focus back in on absolute. And the return on athens is he not doing pretty much the same thing the any app that weve got not that does and is a whole list of things that we are going to do this this is the say yes yes yes except havent even read the super 8 and its doing all sorts of things and maybe selling your data etc etc its we chat just not the chinese version Everything Else that we use on different apps from around the world anyway. Well the key there is that. The at the root cause i would say in response to the comments from the gentleman that you just quoted the root cause is really the party state in china that is the root cause of these tensions because you know with facebook yes you know we give a lot of our data to Companies LikeFacebook Google and apple but here you know theres a open societies theres a firewall between the state and society and so we have a 4th amendment other countries have similar laws and you know there is a barrier between what the government can do with respect to private companies but in the communist party system in the party there is no barrier so that is what makes. 10 cents we chat to talk different. You want to shake next reaction you know were getting a go ahead i think its of course equivalence and yes the facebook. Class our data but the crackdown were down a mostly they want to make money they want to sell at a table cause so death is different so in terms of how you know reach out. You know by extension chess government. The purpose of the gather i mean you know what people chinese users use weight chat and what they say even credit check groups have you know then there are them into being these are critical of the Chinese Government so i think i mean its a force equivalence in terms of are. Different companies are they are correct that that theres a difference between facebook which thats. Looking at the Bigger Picture we have cindy you and shes a brick comes and to the spectator she spoke to us a little bit earlier about the string of alyson. Were trying to buy and take talk and we chat is ramping up the tech the company from China Companies either in the firing line are no longer Telecom Giants which may have a close relation to the state and also Infrastructure Sector has now the social Media Companies so what does this mean for the future bust them freedom when it comes to Technology Well it takes them was that close to china by banning apps and it also released chinese entrepreneurs to wonder even if that they have an issue relationship to the Chinese State what is official for them in the west killing was such an interesting point if you are devising making apps and youre thinking about this is the app basically very cool for people to use people already remarked on how comprehensive is in what it can do. Entrepreneurs from pushin