Not the US govt. but independent audits of TikTok US from e.g. Oracle which never fully went through.
I find the Tiktok ban more of a geopolitics thing, less of a national security reponse.
You cannot just make assertions about something, and without substantiating them _adequately_, say 'they just told a lie, so everything that they said are lies'.
This is rooted in an anti-China rhetoric and only undermines the US position since for more than a decade many western companies' complaints against Chinese partners were about forced technology transfers.
TikTok also lied under oath about where US data is stored [1]. So I’m not sure why anyone should trust anything about them even if they are sold. Even a code and security audit would leave a lot of room for things like AI driven feeds conducting propaganda campaigns. It’s not just code or infrastructure as a point in time but also data. In the end it comes down to trust.
>TikTok also lied under oath about where US data is stored [1]. So I’m not sure why anyone should trust anything about them even if they are sold
Whether you trust a company that has been caught lying under oath is not the same as whether a company should be allowed to operate in a country.
>Even a code and security audit would leave a lot of room for things like AI driven feeds conducting propaganda campaigns. It’s not just code or infrastructure as a point in time but also data
Perhaps so, but that does not mean that those reviews should not be conducted before taking a step as big as forcing a sale. US govt could have given Tiktok US an ultimatum to go through one before coming to this conclusion.
>In the end it comes down to trust.
Yes, absolutely. The US does not trust Tiktok because it is Chinese owned, or is it because of privacy concerns, or is it both? And in any case, would determining the extent of control not help it understand the level of exposure? Grilling people at senate or select committee hearings can be revealing and is politically exciting but there was and still is more to be done to safeguard interests of people already on the platform.
> ...many of the main concerns could have been dispelled by Tiktok getting a source code and security audit...
Source code isn't static. For the sake of argument, a malicious actor could easily submit "clean" source code for review and insert malicious code once it has been audited.
In what appears to be a first, a former employee of ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, has outlined specific claims that the Chinese Communist Party accessed the data of TikTok users on a broad scale, and for political purposes.
newprint|1 year ago
ahtaarra|1 year ago
I find the Tiktok ban more of a geopolitics thing, less of a national security reponse.
You cannot just make assertions about something, and without substantiating them _adequately_, say 'they just told a lie, so everything that they said are lies'.
This is rooted in an anti-China rhetoric and only undermines the US position since for more than a decade many western companies' complaints against Chinese partners were about forced technology transfers.
Edit: correct wording and grammar
blackeyeblitzar|1 year ago
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tikt...
ahtaarra|1 year ago
Whether you trust a company that has been caught lying under oath is not the same as whether a company should be allowed to operate in a country.
>Even a code and security audit would leave a lot of room for things like AI driven feeds conducting propaganda campaigns. It’s not just code or infrastructure as a point in time but also data
Perhaps so, but that does not mean that those reviews should not be conducted before taking a step as big as forcing a sale. US govt could have given Tiktok US an ultimatum to go through one before coming to this conclusion.
>In the end it comes down to trust.
Yes, absolutely. The US does not trust Tiktok because it is Chinese owned, or is it because of privacy concerns, or is it both? And in any case, would determining the extent of control not help it understand the level of exposure? Grilling people at senate or select committee hearings can be revealing and is politically exciting but there was and still is more to be done to safeguard interests of people already on the platform.
amadeuspagel|1 year ago
richbell|1 year ago
Source code isn't static. For the sake of argument, a malicious actor could easily submit "clean" source code for review and insert malicious code once it has been audited.
questhimay|1 year ago
In what appears to be a first, a former employee of ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, has outlined specific claims that the Chinese Communist Party accessed the data of TikTok users on a broad scale, and for political purposes.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index....
TikTok Confirms Some U.S. User Data Is Stored In China
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tikt...
Former TikTok exec: Chinese Communist Party had “God mode” entry to US data
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/06/former-tiktok...