[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 24 (Monday, February 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S535-S538]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Cloture Motion
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the
nomination of Executive Calendar No. 362, Homer L. Wilkes, of
Mississippi, to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural
Resources and Environment.
Charles E. Schumer, Richard Blumenthal, Catherine Cortez
Masto, Richard J. Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jacky
Rosen, Margaret Wood Hassan, Mark Kelly, Benjamin L.
Cardin, Brian Schatz, Debbie Stabenow, Angus S. King,
Jr., Patrick J. Leahy, Martin Heinrich, Tim Kaine, Gary
C. Peters, Chris Van Hollen.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, February 7,
be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
open app markets act
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, here in the United States, the
mobile app market represents a reliable multibillion-dollar payday for
Big Tech. In 2020, Americans downloaded 13.4 billion apps onto their
mobile devices.
Needless to say, mobile apps are a key component of our digital
economy, so it may be surprising to learn that this market is largely
unregulated, unless you count the influence of the two mega
corporations that created it.
Apple and Google have abused their power and used their status as
gatekeepers to stifle innovation and penalize developers who want to
work alongside them rather than ceding control over their products.
This is bad for the industry. It is bad for consumers. It is bad for
the country.
These gatekeeping tendencies aren't just a bump in the road for
developers; they are a roadblock that completely closes off avenues of
competition. Apple, for example, forces developers to use their
exorbitantly expensive App Store payment system, which funnels profits
away from the creators, and it raises prices for consumers. It is a
take-it-or-leave-it arrangement. Of course, when developers do take the
deal, they leave their relationship with their customers behind because
the terms prohibit them from dealing directly with the people who use
their products. They also have to accept that Apple and Google will not
only prioritize native applications, but they will take their
competitors' confidential business information and use it against them.
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed my Open App Markets
Act, which is a bill we have worked some very long hours on. Finally,
we are addressing the stranglehold Big Tech has on the digital app
market. I really do thank Senator Blumenthal and his staff, as well as
our cosponsors, Senators Klobuchar, Rubio, Lummis, Booker, Graham,
Kennedy, Hirono, Hawley, and Chairman Durbin, for putting in so much
time and effort to create this bipartisan piece of legislation.
This bill will reset the rules of the road to protect competition and
consumers by allowing consumers to access third-party apps and app
stores, by prohibiting app store owners from locking developers into
in-app payment arrangements, by ensuring that app developers are
allowed to offer competitive pricing, and by preventing app stores from
misusing confidential business information or app store rankings to
disadvantage developers. If app store gatekeepers violate these rules
of the road, the bill allows for developer lawsuits. It also includes
safeguards to allow app stores to protect the privacy, security, and
safety of consumers, as well as their own intellectual property rights.
It is bipartisan, and it is a good, solid, strong first step. But,
remember, our tradition of maintaining competitive marketplaces isn't
the only thing at stake here.
This weekend, the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing
drew in 16 million viewers. That is down from the last Winter Games in
2018, so hopefully, this means that the various campaigns exposing the
crimes and manipulation of the Chinese Communist Party are making a
difference.
But, still, those 16 million people and their families are taking in
Chinese propaganda. The Games' corporate sponsors weren't worried about
that; they were happy to take advantage of all those eyeballs. And we
know NBC hopes to surpass the nearly $2 billion in revenue they pulled
in during the Tokyo Games.
Protecting that competitiveness is important, but I would argue that
protecting the human rights of people those sponsors and broadcasters
are happy to sweep under the rug is even more important. And right at
this very moment, Big Tech is facilitating crimes against humanity in
China.
Beijing is notorious for censoring speech critical of the communist
government, but part of their grand strategy to silence dissent
involves strong-arming corporations seeking access to the very
lucrative Chinese market. It is not enough to offer an exciting
product; you have to play nice with the CCP or else you are out. You
can't be in their market. That means staying quiet about genocide in
Xinjiang or violent repression in Hong Kong and doing everything in
your power to make sure your customers stay silent too.
The Open App Markets Act has received an outpouring of support from
human rights activists who see firsthand how corporate gatekeeping
actively endangers the lives of dissidents, activists, Uighur Muslims,
Mongols, Tibetans, Hong Kong freedom fighters, and other innocent
people the CCP has chosen to brutalize. We received a letter of support
for the Open App Markets Act signed by many of these individuals that I
would like to share. They wrote, in part:
China suppresses nearly all dissent using its notorious
``Great Firewall'' internet filtering system and through the
cooperation of domestic and foreign companies that are
willing to block and remove accounts, content, and
applications at the unchallenged request of Chinese
authorities.
Few American companies are as subservient to the Chinese
government as Apple. Apple willingly censors dissenting
voices and independent media for all in China and Hong Kong
using its control over the App Store.
We received another letter from the human rights organization
GreatFire that details specific examples of Apple doing the bidding of
the Chinese Communist Party. They wrote in part:
GreatFire, an organization dedicated to fighting internet
censorship, started monitoring Apple's censorship in November
2013, when Apple decided to remove our ``Free Weibo''
application from the Chinese App Store. Apple did not even
wait for the intervention of any Chinese judicial authority
to determine if our app had actually broken any Chinese law.
It collaborated with the Chinese authorities and dealt with
our app the same way it has continued to deal with many more
apps: by enforcing arbitrary and politically motivated
censorship to ensure its financial interest.
I ask unanimous consent to have these two letters printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
January 31, 2022.
Senator Dick Durbin,
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
Senator Chuck Grassley,
Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chair Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, and Members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee: We write as Chinese human
rights activists, pro-democracy movements, national security
experts, and members of persecuted religious communities to
share our deep concerns with Apple's use of its monopolistic
dominance and its collusion with the Chinese government to
stifle freedom of expression in China. As the Committee
considers legislation to rein in the abuses of tech firms, we
encourage it to help dissenting voices and efforts to offer
privacy and security tools in China through protecting the
right to sideload, as included in the Open App Markets Act.
[[Page S536]]
The Chinese Communist Party maintains its grip on power and
its regional expansionism through operating the most
sophisticated censorship and surveillance apparatus in
history. China suppresses nearly all dissent using its
notorious `Great Firewall' internet filtering system and
through the cooperation of domestic and foreign companies
that are willing to block and remove accounts, content, and
applications at the unchallenged request of Chinese
authorities.
Few American companies are as subservient to the Chinese
government as Apple. Apple willingly censors dissenting
voices and independent media for all in China and Hong Kong
using its control over App Store. As the New York Times,
human rights organizations, and members of this Committee
have thoroughly documented, Apple has blocked thousands of
applications for iOS users in China and Hong Kong at the
request of Chinese censors. Apple's decade-long track record
cooperation with Chinese censorship is sweeping and stunning,
including through its blocking of:
HKmap.live, a coordination tool used by protestors bravely
standing up to China's attempts to destroy Hong Kong's
independence and democracy;
Bible and Quranic apps, including the Olive Tree Bible
study guide;
Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, Congressionally-
funded independent media organizations that provides news in
Chinese, Uyghur, and Tibetan languages; and,
Anti-censorship services, including apps funded by
Congress, designed to bypass the Great Firewall to provide
unfiltered and secure access to information, social media,
and news.
While Apple claims to be a defender of human rights in the
West, Apple has deliberately placed Chinese citizen's lives
in the hands of the Chinese government for profit, knowing
the grave consequences. As the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China and others have warned, Apple hosts the
private data of its Chinese users in data centers controlled
by the Chinese government without the safeguards that would
prevent spying, including weakening its access controls and
encryption. As a result, Chinese citizens are unable to
access independent news, practice their faith, or express
themselves freely without real fear of the brutal repression
of the state.
While our organizations have decades of expertise fight
back against China's repression, Apple's complete dominance
over iOS blocks us from offering tools to bypass censorship,
prevent spying, and promote democracy. Our pleas and
campaigns for Apple to do the right thing have been ignored
by Apple's leadership. If we were allowed to provide apps
outside of the censored App Store, also known as sideloading,
we would be able finally offer Chinese communities with tools
to defeat the Great Firewall, such as Ultrasurf, Psiphon, and
FreeGate. The Open App Markets Act's protections for
sideloading would help us open up the world to hundreds of
millions more Chinese people living under repression aided by
Apple.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee considers the Open App
Markets Act, we encourage it stand firm on behalf of freedom
of expression and human rights in China through protecting
our right to offer a lifeline to dissidents, religious
communities, and all those banned by the Chinese Communist
Party.
Sincerely,
Organizations: Uyghur Human Rights Project; China Change;
Citizen Power Initiatives for China; The Hong Kong Watch;
Regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts; Tibetan
Association of Indiana; Atlanta Tibetan Association; Boston
Tibetan Association; Tibetan Association of Vermont; Tibetan
Association of Idaho; Tibetan Association of Ithaca; Tibetan
Community of New York and New Jersey; Sound of Hope Radio
Network; Dialogue China; Democratic Party of China.
Individuals: Jianli Yang, Founder and President of Citizen
power Initiatives for China & Tiananmen Survivor and former
political prisoner of China; Cai Xia, Editor-in-Chief of
Yibao, Former Professor of the CCP Central Party School;
Nanyang Li, Visiting Fellow at Hoovers Institutes, leading
Chinese human rights activist, daughter of Li Rui, a former
secretary of Mao Zedong; Calvin Yu, Chinese civil society
organizer, philanthropist; Deyu Wang, Persecuted Chinese
Christian; Daniel Gong, Human rights activist; Lydia Li,
Independent scholar and human rights activist; Liang Wang,
Chinese artist and human rights activist; Ming Wu, Human
rights activist, Member of the Chinese New Citizens'
Movement; Davis Zeng, Analyst, CitiBank, human rights
activist; Shan Jiang, Member of the Chinese New Citizens'
Movement, human rights activist; Shengchun Luo, Wife of the
detained Chinese New Citizens' Movement leader Ding Jiaxi;
Pinghui Wu, Chinese human rights activist.
Ni Wang, Chinese human rights activist; Wayne Hong, Concert
Manager, Chinese human rights activist; Qi Xue, Independent
scholar, Chinese human rights activist; Jeanette Tong,
Chinese human rights activist; Hai Lin, Medical scientist,
Chinese human rights activist; Anna Chen, Victim of Chinese
religious persecution, Chinese human rights activist; Amy Ma,
Chinese Muslim activist; Shaoping Wu, Human rights lawyer;
Matt Trueman, Activist; Amir George, Pastor; Mike Mo (Hong
Kong), Former District Legislator of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
student leader; Joey Siu (Hong Kong), Director, the Hong Kong
Watch, Hong Kong student leader; Yu Hsin (Hong Kong), Hong
Kong journalist.
Harry Fu, Chinese human rights activist; Rui Liu, Chinese
human rights activist; Wenwen Song, Chinese human rights
activist; Senfen Wei, Chinese human rights activist; Liping
Huang, Director of Citizen Power Initiatives for China; Hong
Zhou, Chinese human rights activist; Jia He, Chinese human
rights activist; Rory O'Connor, Founder of Athenai Institute;
John Metz, Director of Athenai Institute; Jing Zhang, Chinese
human rights activist; Sufi Laghari, Executive Director at
Sindhi Foundation; Lianchao Han, Expert on Chinese Internet
censorship and surveillance.
____
GreatFire,
January 28, 2022.
Subject: Censorship by Apple.
Dear Chair Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, and Members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee: As the Committee considers
legislation to address the power of Big Tech, we write to
share our research and longstanding concerns regarding
Apple's censorship on behalf of the People's Republic of
China and other repressive regimes.
GreatFire, an organization dedicated to fighting internet
censorship, started monitoring Apple's censorship in November
2013, when Apple decided to remove our ``FreeWeibo''
application from the Chinese App Store. Apple did not even
wait for the intervention of any Chinese judicial authority
to determine if our app had actually broken any Chinese law.
It collaborated with the Chinese authorities and dealt with
our app the same way it has continued to deal with many more
apps: by enforcing arbitrary and politically motivated
censorship to ensure its financial interests.
In 2019, we launched AppleCensorship.com, a website
monitoring Apple's removal of apps on its App Stores around
the world. Over the last three years, we have uncovered
numerous cases of app removals, particularly in China, where
Apple collaborates with the Chinese authorities by enforcing
arbitrary and politically motivated censorship to protect its
financial interests.
Our research has produced the following key findings:
Apple proactively removes apps that allow Chinese citizens
to circumvent censorship, all without the need for the
authorities to intervene. None of the top 100 ``virtual
private network services'' (VPNs) in the United States App
Store are available in China.
In October 2019, during the Hong Kong protests violently
suppressed by the police, Apple removed HKmap.live, an app
used by protesters to report aggressive police movements and
the use of tear gas.
AppleCensorship.com counts 191 ``News'' apps currently
unavailable in China's App Store. The New York Times app was
removed in January 2017. Quartz was removed during the Hong
Kong protests in 2019.
More than 26% of all apps tested were found to be
unavailable in China, when the average for other countries is
around 11% and when less than 5% of all apps that we tested
in the U.S. App Store were unavailable.
A study that we conducted with Tibetan human rights groups
and released in June 2019 revealed that at least 29 Tibetan-
themed apps dealing with news, religious study, tourism and
even games are being censored by Apple.
In September 2021, we detected the removal of Bible and
Quran apps in China.
In June 2020, Apple removed two podcast apps, Pocket Casts
and Castro, after the developers refused to censor content on
their platforms.
Two RSS reader apps, Reeder and Fiery Feeds, were removed
in September 2020 for content deemed ``illegal in China''.
Apple's censorship is not limited to China and affects all
countries where Apple operates:
In November 2021, Apple's removed the ``Smart Voting'' app
developed by the team associated with Russian political
opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The app, which informed its
users about candidates for the Parliamentary elections and
their political affiliation, was removed just as polls
opened. Apple went further by contacting private messaging
app Telegram to request the removal of content (i.e. a chat
bot) related to Navalny's campaign. Telegram published a
statement condemning the move but stating it had to comply
with Apple in order to avoid being removed from the App
Store.
In June 2021, our research on LGBTQ+ related apps revealed
that, out of approximately 150 LGBTQ+ apps identified, 61
apps were partially unavailable. China came second in terms
of unavailability, with 27 LGBTQ+ apps unavailable in the
country, just behind Saudi Arabia (28 apps unavailable) and
before United Arab Emirates (25 apps unavailable). In total,
1377 instances of LGBTQ+ app's unavailability were found in
152 countries (only Australia's, Canada's and US' App Store
contained all the tested apps).
In addition to targeted removal, that is to say removals of
apps in the App Store of the requesting country, which result
from alleged ``legal violations'', Apple also responds to
governments' requests made on the basis of alleged violations
of Apple's own ``Platform Policy''. Such takedown requests,
mostly originating from authoritarian regimes like China and
Russia, led to approximately 30,000 removals in 175 countries
between January 2019 and December 2020.
The list of compromises by Apple over the last five years
is not limited to censorship on
[[Page S537]]
the App Store. For example, Apple's own podcasting app
remains available in China, as Apple proactively removes
``sensitive'' podcasts. Although there are too many
compromises that threaten human rights to be fully listed
here, in 2021 only, Apple:
facilitated access by the Chinese authorities to iCloud
data for Chinese users;
decided not to release its new ``Private Relay'' feature in
China and other countries; and
censored Chinese consumers by preventing them from
engraving ``sensitive'' content on their Apple products
(iPads or Airtags).
Apple discloses almost no information on app removals,
hiding the full scope of compliance with Chinese censorship.
In some cases, apps' developers or publishers were not aware
of their app's unavailability until we contacted them. In
October, 2017, Senators Cruz and Leahy wrote to Apple asking
questions about censorship in its China App Store. In Apple's
response, the company admitted to having removed 674 VPNs
from the China App Store at the request of the Chinese
government. These VPNs would have allowed Chinese citizens to
skirt censorship restrictions.
Apple was widely condemned after this revelation--yet five
years later Apple has only increased its censorship efforts
in China and has continued to proactively work to restrict
freedom of expression for its Chinese customers.
Apple has even hosted apps on its App Store run by a China
Paramilitary Group (the Xinjiang Production and Construction
Corps) accused of participating in forced labor of Uyghurs
and under U.S. Magnitsky sanctions.
Apple's so-called Transparency Reports do not reveal which
apps have been censored, and remain questionably vague on the
reasons, legal or not, behind this censorship.
The resulting opacity has become Apple's true trademark:
from how it curates content on the App Store; to how it
implements its arbitrary ``App Store Guidelines''; to what
data it communicates to governments; to the deals the company
makes with even the most repressive regimes in the world.
Apple conceals almost everything about its operations.
Apple's record-high financial results are the result of a
strategy that has relied significantly on Apple's alliance
with the Chinese authoritarian government. This alliance
comes with a cost. In order to do business in China, Apple
has abandoned its values, ethical standards, and principles.
Apple has actively worked to suppress the rights and freedoms
of their customers, even when the company was not pressured
to do so by Beijing. We believe that the time is overdue for
Apple to put a halt to such unethical and immoral behavior.
We remain at your disposal should you have any additional
questions.
With warmest regards,
Benjamin Ismail,
Project Director, AppleCensorship.com.
Charlie Smith,
Co-Founder, GreatFire.org.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. It makes no sense to make a name for yourself
creating secure devices for Western users but to then turn around and
go out of your way to make the devices in the hands of the world's most
vulnerable people less secure.
The time has come for us as a country to decide what matters more:
preserving this toxic entanglement with China or preserving life and
liberty and the democratic ideals that make us so fortunate to begin
with.
I ask my colleagues to consider joining me and Senator Blumenthal in
support of the Open App Markets Act to protect competition, to protect
consumers, and to protect those basic human rights that the world's
most powerful corporations have decided should take a backseat to
access and profit.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
60th Anniversary Of The Embargo Against Cuba
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, today, February 7th, 2022, marks the 60th
anniversary of the day the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba first
went into effect. Just think of that--60 years. It is three
generations, 12 Presidents, 60 sessions of Congress, six
transformational decades ago, and dating all the way back to the middle
of the Cold War.
The goal of the embargo, which has been expanded multiple times, was
unmistakable. It was to depose the Cuban Government by imposing a vast
web of punitive sanctions designed to crush the Cuban economy and
incite a popular uprising. In fact, to be precise, in a declassified
April 1960 State Department memo confidently entitled ``The Decline and
Fall of Castro,'' they said the purpose was ``denying money and
supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about
hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of [the] government.'' What a
remarkable, humanitarian attitude on the part of people who had
absolutely no idea of what history is or what might happen.
Sixty years later, hunger and desperation are pervasive in Cuba, but
the Cuban Government remains under the firm grip of the Communist
Party. No opposition party has been allowed to function or to challenge
it. Free and fair elections are as elusive as they were 60 years ago.
Political dissent is not tolerated.
But the U.S. embargo, which we proudly and consistently have kept, is
opposed by every other nation in this hemisphere. In fact, it is
opposed by every other nation in the world except Israel. In other
words, after 60 years, we have convinced only one other government--
just one--to join us and not a single government in our own hemisphere.
This failed attempt to isolate Cuba succeeded only in isolating
ourselves.
Those responsible for this administration's policy toward Cuba have
apparently decided that, despite Candidate Biden's pledge to the
contrary; despite the failure of the embargo to achieve any of its
objectives, which the CIA acknowledged in a declassified report back in
1982; despite a worsening human rights situation; and despite
contributing to the misery of the Cuban people, whom the White House
insists it wants to help, there is no reason to change course.
Today, hard hit by COVID and the administration's cutoff of
remittances and restrictions on travel by Americans to Cuba, life for
most Cubans is an increasingly desperate struggle. Popular protests
against the government's mishandling of the pandemic, mishandling of
the economy, and autocratic rule have been met with a fierce crackdown,
summary trials, and lengthy prison sentences, including for young
people.
I have spoken many times about the stark disconnect between the
administration's policy toward Cuba and the reality in Cuba, so I am
not going to repeat what I said before. I am as outraged by the
crackdown on protesters in Cuba as anyone. Unlike many others, I have
actually said that to Cuban authorities. No one condones acts of
vandalism or violence, but provocations and abuse of peaceful
protesters are inexcusable.
I also know that trying to bludgeon the Cuban authorities into
submission does not work. What is the proof of that? We tried it for 60
years, and it hasn't worked. It has only made things worse. It
emboldens the hardliners in the government who can then blame the
United States for their own failed policies.
They are determined to hold on to power, and if they fail at
something, they just blame it on the United States.
But it hurts the Cuban people, impeding their ability to obtain
medical supplies as basic as syringes and masks to fight COVID and
preventing small businesses from accessing U.S. products.
I visited a lot of those small businesses. They actually want to deal
with America, and we are cutting them off. It flies in the face of our
belief in the power of diplomacy through engagement with countries
whose governments we disagree with, especially a country 90 miles away
whose people we share so much in common with.
Sooner or later--and I hope it is sooner--the administration needs to
face the fact that continuing Donald Trump's policy of punitive
sanctions and vitriol has backfired. The longer they delay that day of
reckoning, the worse it will be. And we can do better than this. We can
defend human rights, as we should. We can stand up for the right of
people to choose their leaders in free and fair elections, as we
should. We could also do what we do with virtually every other
government in the world with which we disagree: find areas of common
purpose for the benefit of the people in both countries.
So on this 60th anniversary of a Cold War policy of sanctions and
isolation that has failed in every conceivable way, let's dedicate
ourselves to a new way forward that our allies and partners in this
hemisphere will support, that the American people support, that
supports the Cuban people, and most importantly, that we can show the
rest of the world it is worthy of the United States, worthy of us. What
we are
[[Page S538]]
doing right now is not. We can do better. We must do better.
I think of so many young people I have talked to and met in Cuba who
want a different world and can't understand why the United States slams
the door on them. We can do better. We have to do better. I pray we
will do better.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________