Lots of folks here arguing that the focus on TikTok is unfair, given the data collection practices of domestic corps like Facebook. From a privacy point of view, this argument is well-founded, but I think it's tangential to the argument TFA is making, which is: this data collection done by a foreign government and exploited for surveillance or espionage is a national security risk.
I get it. We want corps to stop hoovering up our data because they can use it to manipulate us with advertising, and they can mishandle it such that other bad actors can exploit it. I'm with you, this is a valid concern that we should address. But I think TikTok's specific case warrants additional concern because it's all that, plus it puts a geopolitical adversary in control of the data, countless devices, and a media channel central to the current cultural zeitgeist.
I don't think it's reasonable to wait for general regulation of social media corps while TikTok continues to do its thing, particularly if targeted action against TikTok is politically viable.
> this data collection done by a foreign government and exploited for surveillance or espionage is a national security risk.
How were Snowden revelations of USG<>Bigtech relationship materially different from what's happening here? Maybe it was less transparent?
Any "woke" person can see the cognitive dissonance here. It's all fine that you use the geopolitical rivalry argument but not if you try to paint one side of the argument as "free" and "liberal" and "subject to rule of law" when it's clearly not the case
I actually think it's naive. Sure if military personnel or state department use TikTok that can create security risks, but the same is true with any other social media network.
The additional data that TikTok tries to gather from the mobile OSs is insignificant compared to what you can get from videos that people take willingly.
Russian soldiers use VK, that doesn't stop OSINT researchers tracking them down on there.
Ok. Put a stop to TikTok and allow US companies to vacuum up our data. China then hacks those companies servers or installs agents within the companies and gets the data anyway. Security threat not avoided.
None of these companies should be allowed to store and abuse the sensitive information people divulge when using many of these services.
Agreed, these complaints about hypocrisy are nonsensical. If a serial killer locks his door at night for fear of being murdered, he’s not a hypocrite. On the contrary, his evil deeds have made him wise to the dangers of the night.
This is almost certainly Facebook just lobbying to get mindshare back from TikTok. It's great for the US government too, who probably already has unfettered access to everything Facebook collects on its users. If US users go to TikTok, Facebook loses money, and the US gov't loses easy access to all that sweet sweet data. So probably Facebook doesn't even have to lobby too hard for a statement like this to come out from the FCC. Whether or not it's true doesn't even really matter. Do you want your personal data flowing to the CCP or the US gov't & Facebook/Instagram? Both seem like really bad choices to me. The only good choice is not to use any of these services at all.
Honestly, if some government needs to have my data, and I can't reasonably prevent it, I would be more than happy if that's some government on the other side of the planet without practical means to put me in jail, torture, and influence to do things that can harm me and my friends and family.
Being spied by Russia, no problem. Being spied by China, no big deal either. But being spied by the USA or EU controlled entities can pose a life thread to any EU citizen.
US citizens have it only a bit better, since they are at least protected from the EU, and only their own government has power upon them.
>plus it puts a geopolitical adversary in control of the data, countless devices, and a media channel central to the current cultural zeitgeist.
You should interrogate your assumption that the government inside the state lines is less "adversarial" to everyone's interests than the one outside state lines, even at a level of geopolitics.
- Our phone hardware and operating systems are intrinsically insecure.
- There is no practical/effective data gathering regulation (and I'm not sure
it's possible to craft any without destroying innovation)
- All social media companies are doing it, leading to jeers of "hypocrisy!"
- All governments play the same games, reducing the arguments to
"Whose side are you on?" That's effectively meaningless in a
globalised world. The consequence is more nationalism and an ever
more fragmented splinternet.
- The only proposed solutions amount to more authoritarian,
controlling and regulatory responses.
What can we do?
There is a solution. Stop protecting these companies. Burn down
WIPO. Tear up practically all "intellectual property" laws. Revoke
millions of patents. Repeal all DCMA type laws regarding reverse
engineering. Kick trademark and brand protection law to the curb.
The real problem is gargantuan monolithic, captive audiences that
exist because incumbent monopolies enjoy protectionist measures that
amount to a giant international trade racket.
Creating a real market that forces radical interoperability would
solve many of the problems we see today. Who would care about TiKToK
or Facebook if they were one of 500,000 small "Social Apps" that
connected to a standardised international network.
Hell, we could even give it a catchy name, like "The Internet".
Not the FCC, this is one FCC commissioner's statement. He's not the chair, nor is he part of the majority party, so you can probably read this as a political statement.
Republicans had a chance to ban TikTok during the last administration. They did not do it.
It annoys me that these headlines keep falsely attributing his statements to the FCC as a whole. I hate TikTok and I tend to agree that it’s a security risk (so, too, is Facebook, IMO). But this guy has it out for TikTok solely for political reasons and in order to please Trump.
My concern seems to be different than that of most expressed here. Companies collecting too much information is a problem, sure, but that's not what deeply worries me when it comes to social media generating/consuming platforms like Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Especially those that algorithmically decide what to show users.
Foreign countries controlling what information a coming generation is exposed to is IMO much more concerning than collecting and profiling (of course also troubling, but a slightly different league). There is little oversight into what bubbles are formed, who is fed what, etc.
Want to create division in a foreign country? What better place to start than on social media and malleable kids.
This applies equally to TikTok as Facebook, for different reasons. I don't trust TikTok because of CCP, and Facebook because everything is for sale.
Lawyer that opposed net neutrality and now voicing his disapproval of apps built by the China.
Sounds like he's making a play to become a career politician using his version of what 'ok authoritarianism' is.
I'd like to see someone actually prove a security risk rather than hypothetically posing it. I.e. show me 1000 tiktok downloaded videos run through a program with their metadata something of strategic importance to a nation state (like the location of nuclear missiles haha).
"TikTok is said to collect “everything”, from search and browsing histories; keystroke patterns; biometric identifiers—including faceprints"
How can they even collect browsing history or biometric identifiers on Android? Isn't browser history stored in the browser's private storage space, or am I being naive here?
Very unlikely to be accurate. If it was, TikTok wouldn't be on the app stores.
* Browsing history: If a user uses a WebView in your app, you can obtain the history of* that WebView instance.
Xiaomi phones let applications have access to the first (100?) bytes of each pcap line. [note: this is probably unintended, but their bug bounty programme didn't care].
* Keystroke patterns: You can track user keystrokes within your app. If you're a keyboard or accessibility provider, you can access keystrokes globally. I haven't used TikTok, but it's very unlikely that they do either of these, the UX to enable them is not pleasant because they're dangerous actions to take.
* Biometric identifiers: If a user takes a selfie, you have their iris/fingerprint/faceprint
The thing people are missing when they say "naturally foreign government collecting data is a security risk" - is that by US openly admitting this - they are signaling to all other countries allowing US tech companies to operate there that they should be firewalling because it is a security risk.
World is > US and China, Europe, SA, Africa, the rest of Asia - this is a clear cut message "you need to have your social networking in-country to prevent others from compromising you".
I honestly think that should be done anyway. For example, if Britain blocked Facebook for not being consumer friendly what would we really lose? Facebook would be recreated over night. The profits would be kept in country. And in addition, we might have a slightly better barrier against the American culture seeping into the country.
Sure, we could lose some app integrations but if the internet was more segregated API standards would be developed to mitigate this.
Red flags ever since it was "breaking news" in the infosec community that TikTok collects "all information." It's sad at this point how much of a slave humanity is to vanity and social media. Social media is a higher risk to humanity than Climate Change.
> When challenged if the CCP has seen any non-public user data, he said, “We have never shared information with the Chinese government nor would we […]
Such easy misdirection. Never shared, doesn't mean CCP doesn't just injest it. Most people don't have the ability to understand how information works in tech anyway. I don't blame them. We're in a situation that's way worse than "the 1%", it's the 0.001% that know how information technology works.
As an aside...
I can't tell if it is a comedy, tragedy, or thriller when the story-line that ends up creating AGI most likely will be an Intelligence Agency. With all the data collection they're doing and prediction, they may even already have invented it decades ago.
One interesting aspect of this case is that, should Apple and Google follow through and force TikTok off their App Stores - many people will feel quite "disenfranchised" due to the popularity of the App.
This would force many who would otherwise never think about the consequences of these walled garden ecosystems and their lack of control, to suddenly have to do so.
As stupid as the idea is I'm hoping it happens for this reason. Maybe people will realize the importance of truly owning their devices. It would be pretty ironic if that were to happen over TikTok, though.
The other side of the coin that I experience in my circles is parents and people just don't care. Everyone I talk with about pretty much says the same thing along the lines of 'if they want to look at my diddly Doo this then they're most welcome too'.
A lot of people generally really don't care a hoot about this stuff.
It’s easy to not care if you don’t get the full picture. The data in question is not “your diddly doo”, but the aggregated diddly-doos of 200 million people and the insights and power it provides.
What disturbs me is that it seems to be taken as a given that a piece of software running on our computers can even be “banned” in the first place. This statement would have no fangs if we could run any software we liked on our devices. But we’ve gone so far down the walled garden path that the implication seems to be “removed from app stores” => “no longer running on US customers’ devices.” Regardless of what you think about TikTok in particular, or about the benefits of walled garden platforms, this is a chilling omen of things to come.
Uncle Sam asking the 2 great censors of the west to get rid of the most popular app in their stores, so that the east will cease competing with said Uncle on who gets to brainwash their citizens. Gold.
Whichever way this goes, one of these parties loses big, which is a good thing for us humans.
As much as the US government does questionable and bad things (and it does), the CCP is worse. The US still has at least the semblance of the rule of law. There is still some separation between corporations and the government.
Corporations in China are extensions of the state and tools of foreign policy in a way they just aren't in the West. The US government can also be replaced. That's why China and the US just aren't equivalent here and why something like Tiktok is of greater risk and concern than any US Big Tech app or platform.
Yes, US law enforcement can get access to, say, messages. There's a process for that. Some of it is pretty questionable (eg FISA court, pen registers, NSLs) but at least there's a process. I don't for a second believe that US intelligence has a firehose of everything posted on Twitter and Facebook just because I don't believe the US government has the storage capacity required.
Secondly, China is completely protectionist about access to its market. There are Chinese versions for every app and platform. China uses access to its market as a giant carrot to exact concessions from Western companies but they're chasing a phantom: China will never let any Western company "win" in China.
Part of getting access to China is playing ball with the CCP, which means giving access to data on a whole level above the US government. It means enforcing the Great Firewall and, for example, censoring mention of the Tiannamen Square massacre.
Trade needs to be recipricoal so if China restricts access to the Chinese market, I see no issue with Western countries responding in kind.
The threat model for something like Tiktok is a whole lot worse than any Western equivalent.
Well, I would say Social Media are unacceptable security risk instead of TikTok. Chinese gov generally can't do anything in US compared to US government, so personally I think facebook is more risky.
We need better privacy and social media reform instead of targeting tiktok. Also, why should we listen to Brendan Carr who shouldn't be able to speak for entire FCC. He is from Ajit Pai who takes lobbies from Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter. Looks like they are worried that their accomplices can't steal more data than tiktok. Lastly, the funny thing is Facebook was asking me for photo and phone number for verification which I denied.
I agree, but from where I'm sitting (Europe) the exact same thing goes for many US based companies. Not that we have an alternative, and at least you can easily get by without TikTok (I haven't even visited it, ever).
I think this is a dangerous move from the US. If this goes forward I can see an increasing number of countries banning all US social media. Specially since we know very well how close of a relationship they have with TSA and other US intel bodies.
Are we going to see a future where every country/economic block has their own separate social media/search engines like China and Russia?
It's is an attack on users freedom but it could also be a big economic opportunity for those who decide to foster their own internal technological ecosystem.
Tiktok is an app that, in my opinion, is only popular because SV lost interest in building social media apps for young people after Snapchat. Facebook made a (successful) play for older users but lost the youth. That's fine in the short term: Those older users have more spending power and your advertisers will appreciate that. But it does mean competitors can eat you from the "bottom up" and make you look like a Dinosaur.
1. On reading the article it seems like Tik Tok VP, Head of Public Policy has reasonably refuted all allegations with satisfactory explanation.
2. This comes conveniently at a time when Tik Tok is poised to overtake Google for search traffic in 18 to 30 age group.
As usual, the jokes on the public. No one gives a flying fuck about our privacy.
Considering that TikTok is a government controlled corporation (and all businesses in China effectively are) I don't know why anyone should be particularly inclined to trust their representations on this matter if they cannot be independently verified. It is in China's national security interest to deny the existence of any of this kind of data collection and analysis, especially in China.
[+] [-] ec109685|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unityByFreedom|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpk|3 years ago|reply
I get it. We want corps to stop hoovering up our data because they can use it to manipulate us with advertising, and they can mishandle it such that other bad actors can exploit it. I'm with you, this is a valid concern that we should address. But I think TikTok's specific case warrants additional concern because it's all that, plus it puts a geopolitical adversary in control of the data, countless devices, and a media channel central to the current cultural zeitgeist.
I don't think it's reasonable to wait for general regulation of social media corps while TikTok continues to do its thing, particularly if targeted action against TikTok is politically viable.
Edit: typo
[+] [-] 627467|3 years ago|reply
How were Snowden revelations of USG<>Bigtech relationship materially different from what's happening here? Maybe it was less transparent?
Any "woke" person can see the cognitive dissonance here. It's all fine that you use the geopolitical rivalry argument but not if you try to paint one side of the argument as "free" and "liberal" and "subject to rule of law" when it's clearly not the case
[+] [-] janekm|3 years ago|reply
The additional data that TikTok tries to gather from the mobile OSs is insignificant compared to what you can get from videos that people take willingly.
Russian soldiers use VK, that doesn't stop OSINT researchers tracking them down on there.
[+] [-] jmfayard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cudgy|3 years ago|reply
None of these companies should be allowed to store and abuse the sensitive information people divulge when using many of these services.
[+] [-] shusaku|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therealasdf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mindwipe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jliptzin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tut-urut-utut|3 years ago|reply
Being spied by Russia, no problem. Being spied by China, no big deal either. But being spied by the USA or EU controlled entities can pose a life thread to any EU citizen.
US citizens have it only a bit better, since they are at least protected from the EU, and only their own government has power upon them.
[+] [-] croes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotuswroteus|3 years ago|reply
You should interrogate your assumption that the government inside the state lines is less "adversarial" to everyone's interests than the one outside state lines, even at a level of geopolitics.
[+] [-] epolanski|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|3 years ago|reply
- Our phone hardware and operating systems are intrinsically insecure.
- There is no practical/effective data gathering regulation (and I'm not sure it's possible to craft any without destroying innovation)
- All social media companies are doing it, leading to jeers of "hypocrisy!"
- All governments play the same games, reducing the arguments to "Whose side are you on?" That's effectively meaningless in a globalised world. The consequence is more nationalism and an ever more fragmented splinternet.
- The only proposed solutions amount to more authoritarian, controlling and regulatory responses.
What can we do?
There is a solution. Stop protecting these companies. Burn down WIPO. Tear up practically all "intellectual property" laws. Revoke millions of patents. Repeal all DCMA type laws regarding reverse engineering. Kick trademark and brand protection law to the curb.
The real problem is gargantuan monolithic, captive audiences that exist because incumbent monopolies enjoy protectionist measures that amount to a giant international trade racket.
Creating a real market that forces radical interoperability would solve many of the problems we see today. Who would care about TiKToK or Facebook if they were one of 500,000 small "Social Apps" that connected to a standardised international network.
Hell, we could even give it a catchy name, like "The Internet".
[+] [-] unityByFreedom|3 years ago|reply
Republicans had a chance to ban TikTok during the last administration. They did not do it.
[+] [-] elliekelly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] okamiueru|3 years ago|reply
Foreign countries controlling what information a coming generation is exposed to is IMO much more concerning than collecting and profiling (of course also troubling, but a slightly different league). There is little oversight into what bubbles are formed, who is fed what, etc.
Want to create division in a foreign country? What better place to start than on social media and malleable kids.
This applies equally to TikTok as Facebook, for different reasons. I don't trust TikTok because of CCP, and Facebook because everything is for sale.
[+] [-] roca|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoGravitas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedk-42|3 years ago|reply
Lawyer that opposed net neutrality and now voicing his disapproval of apps built by the China.
Sounds like he's making a play to become a career politician using his version of what 'ok authoritarianism' is.
I'd like to see someone actually prove a security risk rather than hypothetically posing it. I.e. show me 1000 tiktok downloaded videos run through a program with their metadata something of strategic importance to a nation state (like the location of nuclear missiles haha).
[+] [-] XiS|3 years ago|reply
How can they even collect browsing history or biometric identifiers on Android? Isn't browser history stored in the browser's private storage space, or am I being naive here?
[+] [-] david_allison|3 years ago|reply
* Browsing history: If a user uses a WebView in your app, you can obtain the history of* that WebView instance.
Xiaomi phones let applications have access to the first (100?) bytes of each pcap line. [note: this is probably unintended, but their bug bounty programme didn't care].
* Keystroke patterns: You can track user keystrokes within your app. If you're a keyboard or accessibility provider, you can access keystrokes globally. I haven't used TikTok, but it's very unlikely that they do either of these, the UX to enable them is not pleasant because they're dangerous actions to take.
* Biometric identifiers: If a user takes a selfie, you have their iris/fingerprint/faceprint
[+] [-] moonchrome|3 years ago|reply
World is > US and China, Europe, SA, Africa, the rest of Asia - this is a clear cut message "you need to have your social networking in-country to prevent others from compromising you".
[+] [-] simmerup|3 years ago|reply
Sure, we could lose some app integrations but if the internet was more segregated API standards would be developed to mitigate this.
[+] [-] pyinstallwoes|3 years ago|reply
> When challenged if the CCP has seen any non-public user data, he said, “We have never shared information with the Chinese government nor would we […]
Such easy misdirection. Never shared, doesn't mean CCP doesn't just injest it. Most people don't have the ability to understand how information works in tech anyway. I don't blame them. We're in a situation that's way worse than "the 1%", it's the 0.001% that know how information technology works.
As an aside...
I can't tell if it is a comedy, tragedy, or thriller when the story-line that ends up creating AGI most likely will be an Intelligence Agency. With all the data collection they're doing and prediction, they may even already have invented it decades ago.
[+] [-] uejfiweun|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drvdevd|3 years ago|reply
This would force many who would otherwise never think about the consequences of these walled garden ecosystems and their lack of control, to suddenly have to do so.
[+] [-] RobbieGM|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pleb_nz|3 years ago|reply
A lot of people generally really don't care a hoot about this stuff.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archagon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TingPing|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keyme|3 years ago|reply
Uncle Sam asking the 2 great censors of the west to get rid of the most popular app in their stores, so that the east will cease competing with said Uncle on who gets to brainwash their citizens. Gold.
Whichever way this goes, one of these parties loses big, which is a good thing for us humans.
[+] [-] jmyeet|3 years ago|reply
Corporations in China are extensions of the state and tools of foreign policy in a way they just aren't in the West. The US government can also be replaced. That's why China and the US just aren't equivalent here and why something like Tiktok is of greater risk and concern than any US Big Tech app or platform.
Yes, US law enforcement can get access to, say, messages. There's a process for that. Some of it is pretty questionable (eg FISA court, pen registers, NSLs) but at least there's a process. I don't for a second believe that US intelligence has a firehose of everything posted on Twitter and Facebook just because I don't believe the US government has the storage capacity required.
Secondly, China is completely protectionist about access to its market. There are Chinese versions for every app and platform. China uses access to its market as a giant carrot to exact concessions from Western companies but they're chasing a phantom: China will never let any Western company "win" in China.
Part of getting access to China is playing ball with the CCP, which means giving access to data on a whole level above the US government. It means enforcing the Great Firewall and, for example, censoring mention of the Tiannamen Square massacre.
Trade needs to be recipricoal so if China restricts access to the Chinese market, I see no issue with Western countries responding in kind.
The threat model for something like Tiktok is a whole lot worse than any Western equivalent.
[+] [-] jossclimb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ampgt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cute_boi|3 years ago|reply
We need better privacy and social media reform instead of targeting tiktok. Also, why should we listen to Brendan Carr who shouldn't be able to speak for entire FCC. He is from Ajit Pai who takes lobbies from Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter. Looks like they are worried that their accomplices can't steal more data than tiktok. Lastly, the funny thing is Facebook was asking me for photo and phone number for verification which I denied.
[+] [-] jacquesm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gverri|3 years ago|reply
Are we going to see a future where every country/economic block has their own separate social media/search engines like China and Russia?
It's is an attack on users freedom but it could also be a big economic opportunity for those who decide to foster their own internal technological ecosystem.
[+] [-] mullen|3 years ago|reply
You are way too late to this part of the discussion.
[+] [-] spamizbad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shreedinger|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] butlerm|3 years ago|reply