[HN Gopher] The feds asked TikTok for lots of domestic spying fe...
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The feds asked TikTok for lots of domestic spying features
Author : thunderbong
Score : 269 points
Date : 2023-08-22 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| To me, banning Tiktok smells like burning books.
|
| YMMV.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Or moral panics over Jazz, Rock, Dungeons & Dragons, whatever.
| People went from not knowing it existed to throwing fits after
| they found out that it's popular with socially progressive Gen
| Z-ers, and that a handful of teenagers screwed with a Donnie
| Dumbass rally via KPop spam.
|
| The emperor has no clothes until the US has an equivalent to
| the GDPR that legally enforces privacy practices for _all_
| companies, and all NSA surveillance is abolished. I 'm all for
| preventing mass surveillance, actually doing it. But this is
| just a farce, and a culture war facet at that. It's just a
| vocal minority that's mad about people consuming media other
| than the conservative crack pipe.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| There's plenty of conservative content on TikTok so I
| wouldn't paint it as some progressive paradise. That platform
| is mostly misinformation, and is playing a huge role in
| radicalizing people on the right
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| The US would not be banning TikTok if it was run by a US
| company. It's not about the content.
| nullifidian wrote:
| What's the real threat of TikTok to the US? It should have
| nothing to do with spying since there isn't anything important
| that's submitted to the app(Who uses TikTok DMs?). If the app has
| a backdoor functionality or purposely made vulnerabilities and
| the feds are concerned by it, then it's a question to Google and
| their store's security/review policies/practices, and could be
| negated entirely by a mandate for TikTok to store all non-video
| traffic sent to the US users with a US based third party, in an
| unencrypted form. But it would be going overboard since in
| actuality it would be insane to for Chinese intelligence services
| to use TikTok to send exploits -- it could be easily detected and
| would be the casus belli for shattering the company, which is an
| 8 billion dollar business in the US.
|
| What the US establishment actually doesn't like is that TikTok
| wields a capability to influence the American public by
| amplifying certain topics and deranking others, also with their
| content policy. It's a capability that the US companies enjoy all
| across the world with few authoritarian exceptions, and even the
| EU doesn't get to review Facebook or Google's algorithms (there
| is an effort to force them to explain their algos (Digital
| Services Act), but as far as I know it's not even close to the
| intrusive search-like audits and vetos mentioned in this
| article), and smaller less influential countries/political
| entities can't even dream of forcing the FAANG to comply with
| their demands. So it's tremendously hypocritical for the US to
| rile up paranoia about "personal data" and "national security"
| especially considering the Snowden revelations. (Draconian)rules
| are for thee but not for me. Also the US companies' algorithms
| are probably protected by the first amendment, so I'm not even
| sure that this crack down on TikTok is even legal.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > It should have nothing to do with spying since there isn't
| anything important that's submitted to the app
|
| How can anyone say that's not true today? I thought we all had
| the same wake-up call that metadata is as important as the data
| itself a few years ago already.
|
| Quantity being a quality all of its own, who can even say what
| it's possible to infer if you had the ability to data mine
| Tiktok? I mean, supposedly it was possible at one point to tell
| when shit's doing down in DC just because there was a spike in
| late night pizza delivery.
|
| It's basically a global training program to teach youth to
| constantly be making and posting videos online in inappropriate
| places.
| nullifidian wrote:
| you can probably datamine TikTok without being Bytedance,
| simply by data scraping using fake accounts, going through
| profiles etc. In that sense it's as much of a threat to the
| US as Youtube, since people are making all kinds of videos in
| all kinds of places, and the videos are easily scrapable as
| of right now
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Sure, maybe you can just scrape. Was the CCP supposed to
| sit around and wait for someone else to do Tiktok, so they
| could just scrape that instead?
|
| Whatever obnoxious crap is on Youtube nowdays, the
| content's notably different and unlikely to be timely. And
| that's if it even leaks the same sort of metadata.
| fidotron wrote:
| There is a legitimate problem with mass siphoning of location
| data by mobile applications. Provided with that information you
| can identify clusters of activity aligned with identified
| military activity and infer what is going on, building a model
| that can then process the location data to predict military
| activity. Even deliberately choosing to not be trackable is
| itself an interesting data point.
|
| Strava managed to do most of this entirely by accident.
|
| The big problem is that once you accept you want to control
| location data why can you justify the ongoing use of it by
| existing systems? (Google and FB, mainly, though far from
| exclusively). I once audited an SDK from a YC startup many
| moons ago that went as far as collecting the altitude and
| bearing of the user when viewing an advertisement - this stuff
| is incredibly widespread.
|
| My personal view is a law is needed that bans central
| collection of location data. (Even anonymised would not be
| sufficient). It's fair game for a user (and their apps) to have
| access to encrypted logs of the location of their devices, but
| that should not be remotely accessible by anyone.
| c420 wrote:
| "Anomaly Six -- also called A6 -- claims it can track
| billions of devices in near real time. And Zignal Labs
| leverages its access to Twitter data streams to sift through
| hundreds of millions of Tweets per day, without restriction.
| The two combined would be an even more powerful surveillance
| tool.
|
| During the presentation, A6 tracked the movements of the
| Russian army along the Ukrainian border, Chinese submarine
| positions, and even the American intelligence community. This
| was a bold idea: To demonstrate just how powerful its phone
| tracking capabilities are, A6 showed Zignal that they could
| spy on American spies.
|
| On a satellite map of the U.S., A6 sales rep Brendon Clark
| drew digital boundaries around CIA and NSA headquarters. This
| is a technique known as geofencing. Within these boundaries,
| 183 dots appeared, representing GPS pings from phones that
| had visited both locations.
|
| Lines radiated from each dot, showing where the phones had
| traveled. As Clark noted: "So, if I'm a foreign intel
| officer, that's 183 start points for me now."
|
| Zeroing in on one dot, A6 showed how its software could
| reveal this individual's movements as they traveled
| throughout the U.S. using the location data pulled from apps
| on their phone. In their demo, the person they were tracking
| traveled to a U.S. army base in Fort Bliss, Texas, an
| airfield in Jordan, and their likely home in suburban
| Maryland, close to NSA headquarters. The demo concluded with
| a Google Street View of the person's house."
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/05/04/surveillance-anomaly-
| six...
| nullifidian wrote:
| >mass siphoning of location data
|
| The issue is indeed legitimate, but it would be a systematic
| issue with all non-western/non-US apps, not just TikTok which
| is being singled out in an ad hoc manner. And it has as much
| to do with Google's store/android location data policies as
| it is with the apps.
|
| >My personal view is a law is needed that bans central
| collection of location data.
|
| Agreed.
|
| ...
|
| UPD: I also suspect that preserving location data from state
| actors is a lost battle and modern SIGINT satellite
| constellations are already capable of pinpointing location of
| phones en masse, or will be capable of doing it in the coming
| years.
| vkou wrote:
| > What's the real threat of TikTok to the US?
|
| It's the same threat that Hollywood and Jazz music had to the
| USSR and the same threat that Facebook and Reddit has to the
| CCP.
| nullifidian wrote:
| Theoretically the first amendment forbids to go after this
| kind of "threat" then, since it would be like forbidding a
| citizen to read a foreign book.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This argument would be more relevant if the concern was
| "chinese cultural influence", but in tiktok, the algorithm is
| intentionally different for those in china vs those in the
| west, with drastic differences in what gets recommended.
|
| Ain't it funny how for themselves, the CCP wants tiktok users
| to see inspirational content and science and happy stuff,
| while the west gets whatever addicting smut we can manage to
| produce. The CCP also says kids in China shouldn't see gay
| stuff, and a certain 1980s chinese social movement.
|
| TikTok is literally the CCP attempting to influence
| americans. It's not okay when facebook does it, and should
| 100% be illegal, but american politicians DGAF about that,
| but it sure as hell shouldn't be okay for the CCP to do that
| either. Just because the american government is unwilling to
| reign in local corporations doesn't mean they should also
| abstain from doing their job with foreign threats.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >the CCP wants tiktok users to see inspirational content
| and science and happy stuff, while the west gets whatever
| addicting smut we can manage to produce.
|
| If TikTok was a US based company I bet the content would be
| about the same. It's in the very American capitalism-
| influenced cultural tradition to have business practices
| that skirt the edge of the legal/acceptable to maximize
| profits, and patronizing speech regulations (recommending
| science instead of "addicting smut") are as un-American as
| it gets.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| > TikTok is literally the CCP attempting to influence
| americans.
|
| With lots and lots of gay/queer/trans content and
| cooking/baking on my FYP it seems to be doing an awfully
| good job at making me want to spend time away from the
| computer and back in the kitchen making delicious food and
| putting on makeup.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| What do you mean by "trans content"?
|
| If it's trans people talking about their transition, it
| seems to be an interest category that would only be
| offered by TikTok if you're actively interesting in it
| and engaging with that type of content.
|
| If you mean "generic content made by people who just
| happen to be trans", that's pretty normal. In the real
| world you also can't go around asking a street performer
| to get out of your face because they happen to be trans.
|
| The same with content creators making funny videos and
| showing a rainbow flag. Why would that be filtered out?
| ArchOversight wrote:
| I mean trans creators that are talking about their
| transition, their struggles, and anything else they want
| to talk about.
|
| I know I am getting exactly what I am interested
| in/engaging in... I was simply pointing out that the OP's
| choice of words stating that TikTok is trying to
| manipulate users with their FYP seems off-base.
|
| I don't want them to get out of my face. I am not
| complaining about the content and the selection, I am
| ecstatic, but its a far cry from media that is meant to
| make me angry.
| havelhovel wrote:
| Nothing important submitted to the app except for a full psych
| profile of every user updated in real time. I'm not a very
| creative person, and I can immediately see how this could be
| used to identify and recruit potential assets or improve
| psyops.
|
| And there's nothing hypocritical about both using and blocking
| an exploit, although I disagree with the reductive view that US
| companies are as aligned with US policy as Chinese companies
| are with China's policy.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >there's nothing hypocritical about both using and blocking
| an exploit
|
| If by exploit you meant the general capabilities granted such
| app's popularity, then in my opinion it is at least somewhat
| hypocritical for a nation who's motto partly is basically(or
| was, I'm not sure as of right now) "free trade and free
| speech"
|
| >and I can immediately see how this could be used to identify
| and recruit potential assets or improve psyops.
|
| So should all cross border internet companies be banned by
| all the countries since cross border activity inevitably
| "exfiltrates" some data on the populace across the border,
| which could be used adversarially?
| havelhovel wrote:
| This isn't a free speech debate. This isn't a Chinese
| newspaper being banned. This isn't a US citizen being
| blocked from expressing themselves. This is a software
| product. The US also regulates products like arms and drug
| shipments without being labeled hypocritical. Free trade
| doesn't mean all or nothing.
|
| As a member of this community, you should already know that
| mobile apps generate certain types of data that distinguish
| them from "all cross border internet companies," and
| whether or not you're willing to acknowledge the unique
| geopolitical context of this particular app, neither of the
| above can be ignored in any productive, nuanced discussion
| about TikTok.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >This isn't a Chinese newspaper being banned. >This isn't
| a US citizen being blocked from expressing themselves.
|
| ACLU and EFF consider the Montana ban unconstitutional.
| So it's about free speech, at least partly.
|
| >This is a software product.
|
| Code == speech argument has been used many times. No
| settled case law so far as far as I know.
|
| >mobile apps generate certain types of data that
| distinguish them from
|
| Then make a law that regulates the exchange of this kind
| of data for all foreign companies. Instead we have the
| CFIUS commission being used to arbitrarily regulate a
| particular foreign company, which theoretically doesn't
| even need to have US presence to function, and it looks
| very close to the Chinese-style protectionism.
|
| >unique geopolitical context of this particular app
|
| The unique geopolitical situation is that US companies
| influence (and siphon data) the entire world(the degree
| of US government's influence on that influence is beside
| the point, and is a very complex issue), but the US
| refuses to be influenced(and have data siphoned) by a
| potential adversary even at the "app where teens dance"
| level.
| kbar13 wrote:
| tiktok has very very deep influence in american culture
| especially amongst the younger audience. a well deployed psyop
| would be bad
| roody15 wrote:
| " What the US establishment actually doesn't like is that
| TikTok wields a capability to influence the American public by
| amplifying certain topics and deranking others, also with their
| content policy."
|
| Ding Ding Ding. Agree the issue is the ability to control the
| national narrative. Too many US users on TikTok means that US
| powers may not be able to control all the topics and discourse
| like they want .
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > So it's tremendously hypocritical for the US to rile up
| paranoia about "personal data" and "national security"
| especially considering the Snowden revelations.
| (Draconian)rules are for thee but not for me.
|
| China does limit what US companies can do there in far more
| draconian ways than the US does for any country, and the EU
| absolutely does have the power to force FAANG companies to
| comply with their data protection laws.
|
| Like, do you not want countries to have spies or try to defend
| themselves from foreign spies? I don't really get the complaint
| here.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >China does limit what US companies can do there
|
| But the narrative is "we are not like them", "we are about
| freedom, free trade, respecting private property and rights".
| But the moment "national security" gets even tangentially
| involved a lot of of this goes out of the window I guess.
|
| >the EU absolutely does have the power
|
| As I said their regulation of US companies is not as
| extensive, and if judged by how ineffectual the cookie law is
| in the presence of omnipresent browser fingerprinting and
| actual GDPR practices by the US companies that I know of the
| compliance is perfunctory at best.
|
| >Like, do you not want countries to have spies or try to
| defend themselves from foreign spies?
|
| The position where a cross border internet company
| automatically a spy questions the legitimacy of internet as a
| communication medium. From that point of view the Chinese
| have been doing the right thing isolating their citizens from
| the foreign internet.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look
| eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused
| Chinese officials of abusing.
|
| I support a domestic ban on TikTok, and this is embarrassing.
| You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is
| spying on your citizens. This undermines any moral authority they
| could claim, and makes their argument look like: "we want to ban
| you because we can't stand anyone doing a better job spying on
| Americans than us".
| rrdharan wrote:
| The article has an inflammatory headline, obviously, because
| that's how the internet works.
|
| If you read the article though the actual content does not
| suggest they were asking for anything other than the ability to
| ensure TikTok/Byte Dance weren't doing anything nefarious...
| and anyway it fell apart when it became obvious how hopeless
| that was because of how shady they (Byte Dance) are.
| neon_electro wrote:
| > Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022,
| would have given the US government agencies like the
| Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more
| access to TikTok's operations than that of any other social
| media company. The agreement would let agencies examine
| TikTok's US facilities, records, and servers with minimal
| prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved
| with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would
| also let US agencies block changes to the app's terms of
| service in the US and order the company to subject itself to
| various audits, all on TikTok's dime, per Forbes. In extreme
| cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to
| demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the US.
|
| Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding US-
| based social media companies to all of these same
| requirements?
| hgsgm wrote:
| From the perspective of the US government, there's a minor
| differentce between US companies and foreign companies. You
| can spot it.
| juanani wrote:
| I.E protectionism
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding
| US-based social media companies to all of these same
| requirements?_
|
| This moves goalposts. American social media companies don't
| have CCP members in their senior ranks.
|
| The problem is the "records and servers" bit could let the
| Feds execute illegal searches on any American's data with
| zero oversight. Not that we're being mean to TikTok.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > American social media companies don't have CCP members
| in their senior ranks.
|
| Who added those goalposts? Chinese social media companies
| don't have FBI, CIA, and NSA members in their senior
| ranks, either.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Both of those claims are almost certainly wrong, if
| "members" includes agents as well as overt officers.
| goodbyesf wrote:
| [flagged]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Here comes the moronic ccp nonsense. Like clockwork._
|
| This isn't an argument.
| goodbyesf wrote:
| [flagged]
| ethanbond wrote:
| Does CCP not exist? Does it exist but isn't a problem to
| US security? Does it exist, it is a problem, but not at
| TikTok specifically?
|
| What's the claim here?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Neither is your tired and boring ccp nonsense_
|
| Again, this isn't an argument.
|
| There are credible questions regarding ByteDance's
| independence from the CCP [1][2][3]. They have a track
| record of censoring anti-Chinese content, _e.g._
| regarding the Tianamen Square massacre [4][5]. Anyone
| claiming claims of CCP infiltration into ByteDance are
| "nonsense" is operating outside the window of evidence.
|
| [1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/24/problem-tiktoks-
| claim-in...
|
| [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-bytedance-
| executive-clai...
|
| [3] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/doj-investigating-
| tiktok-own...
|
| [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49826155
|
| [5]
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21366488/bytedance-
| censor...
| goodbyesf wrote:
| > There are credible questions regarding ByteDance's
| independence
|
| No there isn't. There is no question at all that any
| major company - tech, media, oil, banking, etc is
| independent. All major companies, anywhere in the world,
| are state corporations.
|
| > They've shown a troubling bias in censoring anti-
| Chinese content
|
| They've got to fight disinformation somehow. Right? It's
| funny how you, one of the biggest champions in the fight
| against disinformation, is upset when the chinese do it.
|
| > Anyone claiming claims of CCP infiltration into
| ByteDance are "nonsense" is operating outside the window
| of evidence.
|
| Morons who watch too much youtube nonsense spout ccp
| nonsense. That a major tech company is 'infiltrated' by
| the state is nonsense because as I said, all major tech
| companies are state companies. It would be like morons
| watching chinese version of youtube and spouting nonsense
| like google or facebook is 'infiltrated' by US state
| actors. Google and facebook are US state actors, they
| aren't infiltrated by us state actors.
|
| It's funny how you just 'randomly' started spouting ccp
| nonsense as soon as the media and 'alt'-media started
| spouting the ccp nonsense. Hmmm.
| dmonitor wrote:
| here comes the moronic "here comes the moronic ccp
| nonsense" nonsense. Like clockwork.
|
| isnt debating fun?
| echelon wrote:
| > Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding US-
| based social media companies to all of these same
| requirements?
|
| This is whataboutism, but I'll answer anyway.
|
| This article concerns the actions of a US governmental
| agency known as CFIUS.
|
| CFIUS is not concerned with domestic issues, but rather
| foreign intrusions that impair national security: foreign
| businesses spying on US soil, foreign entities buying
| controlling interests in US companies and technologies,
| foreign real estate purchases near sensitive locations,
| etc. It is a regulatory body that can block sales and
| mergers and put a stop to such activities.
|
| CFIUS wants the ability to audit TikTok so that it can
| ascertain the extent to which is or can be used to spy on
| US targets. From this data, they can themselves block
| certain business activities or recommend further actions to
| be taken by the government.
| rrdharan wrote:
| They aren't, the point is they don't trust Byte Dance at
| all, and with good reason.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > does not suggest they were asking for anything other than
| the ability to ensure TikTok/Byte Dance weren't doing
| anything nefarious
|
| The Chinese do not think that they are doing anything
| nefarious either.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > The Chinese do not think that they are doing anything
| nefarious either.
|
| "Nefarious" is very dependent on context. The CIA spying on
| China is what the CIA is _supposed_ to be doing -- it's not
| nefarious in the US context, but surely, to the Chinese,
| it's "nefarious activity" and the CIA is aware of that.
| Surely the Chinese know that they're up to no good from the
| US point of view, even if it's ethically fine from their
| point of view.
| toasted-subs wrote:
| Feels like old mean people trying to get blackmail onto the
| next generation.
|
| A hard no from me. But it doesn't seem to make a difference
| what I say.
| hedora wrote:
| > The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok's US
| facilities, records, _and servers_ with minimal prior notice
| and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading
| TikTok US data security organization.
|
| Granting access to TikTok servers to multiple US agencies is
| 100% about letting the US spy on users (just as they have the
| right to under US law, such as the US CLOUD Act, and also via
| the well-documented and illegal warrantless surveillance
| programs we all know about). Blocking executive hires is
| clearly so they can prevent whistleblowers from working in the
| organization, and is exactly what the US did when it was using
| Crypto AG to spy on its allies:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-...
|
| Anyway, I'm against a ban of TikTok for the same reason that
| laws that target specific companies or individuals are
| unconstitutional. Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does
| that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally
| to US and foreign social media companies.
| ballenf wrote:
| The hiring veto grants essentially the power to install a
| covert agent.
|
| "We veto all your choices. But what about this guy...
| Relocating from Langley, VA wouldn't be hard for him."
| dataflow wrote:
| > laws that target specific companies or individuals are
| unconstitutional
|
| Do you have a link for this? If you're referring to bills of
| attainder, my understanding wasn't that they're as broad as
| just "targeting".
| afiori wrote:
| > Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think
| should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and
| foreign social media companies.
|
| This is how the previous "Ban Tiktok" bill basically made
| VPNs illegal.
| mmcwilliams wrote:
| It's arguable that the public outcry about the risks of spying
| and the threats of state or country-wide bans on the service
| are exactly the kind of tactics that would be used to leverage
| this sort of access by the US.
| anonporridge wrote:
| There was never a public outcry.
|
| There was an elite outcry.
| OJFord wrote:
| I'm not American, but I'd sooner assume it's just different
| parts of government not talking to each other than such an
| organised concerted effort.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| You can freely assume that (also not American). I think they
| are toying with their citizens.
|
| It is better to think that the gov is incompetent than
| outright malicious (which is definitely the case). Gor some
| reason they NEVER drop the ball into giving more freedoms but
| they ALWAYS drop the ball on taking some away.
| msgilligan wrote:
| They can't do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our
| pledges.
| nouveaux wrote:
| I am against the US spying on its citizens. With that said, the
| US's ban on Tiktok is not a moral one. It's purely a
| competitive one. Why would we want our competitors to obtain
| more information on us?
| kornhole wrote:
| I am curious why. A foreign government has almost no power
| over you. They cannot put you under surveillance, lock you
| up, or put you on naughty lists that mean anything. Your own
| government, domestic data brokers, and other corporate
| entities can have more direct control over your fate.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I'm more worried what a foreign government would do with the
| private information of every US citizen, as opposed to what a
| domestic company would do. I'm still worried in both cases,
| but one of these situations seems much worse to me.
| hakfoo wrote:
| Whenever I see politicians screaming about TikTok, it
| reminds me of the South Park Underpants Gnome business
| model.
|
| 1. Build platform teens love 2. ??? 3. Compromise national
| security.
|
| Fundamentally, the product isn't an effective way to get
| into secure spaces. Its core audience does not generally
| have direct access to those spaces, and if they did, that
| feels like an institutional security breakdown that they
| allowed _any_ personal devices or software there.
|
| At this point, War Thunder and Discord have both proven to
| deliver more high-secrecy documents than TikTok has, yet
| nobody's demanding widespread bans.
|
| "Ooh, but it will spread propaganda or filter things in a
| way Beijing likes." And if that happens, the audience moves
| on. Haven't we noticed that social platforms are hyper-
| fickle, especially for ones targeted towards a youth and
| entertainment market? How many "look at China's awesome
| high-speed rail" videos can you slip into the feed before
| the kids say "screw this, I'm moving to this new platform
| which pioneered the Drink An Entire Litre of Bleach
| challenge"? They actually built a very non-sticky platform
| compared to Facebook (which will persist for decades
| because people need to talk to Aunt Bertha who never
| learned any other platform) or YouTube (which has long-form
| content of value even if the firehose of new content starts
| winding down)
|
| It all just reeks of sour grapes. We were perfectly happy
| with China when they were a passive trading partner, a
| convenient "elsewhere" to offshore all that pesky polluting
| manufacturing to. But when they start to represent a real
| economic and political counterweight, producing a high-
| margin and culturally relevant product that's outcompeting
| our own offerings, we immediately start rattling sabres. I
| figure it's the same spiel as with Huawei and ZTE; if
| domestic products had been compelling enough to win on
| their own merits, there would be no meaningful market
| penetration and we'd never even be discussing a ban in the
| first place.
|
| I wonder if the Vine people feel vindicated now, it feels
| like they could have been TikTok 10 years ago.
| macrolocal wrote:
| > And if that happens, the audience moves on.
|
| For what it's worth, this idea that propaganda is
| noticeable is itself propaganda.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That ship sailed (and sank) with the OPM hack. Beijing
| knows everything about everyone who matters in national
| security.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The OPM hack was years ago. Plenty of new people on the
| list they would want.
| yonaguska wrote:
| A foreign government can't execute a no-knock raid on my
| home, can't garnish my wages, can't throw me in jail from
| outside of my country...etc. I know you used the wording
| "domestic company", but we are talking about governments
| here.
| adventured wrote:
| So you wouldn't be super worried about Russia and its
| hacker farms having deep info on every US citizen, for
| one example?
|
| Foreign attacking agents can do much worse than garnish
| your wages. They _can_ get a no-knock raid sent to your
| home if they have your info and you 're a target of
| theirs. That's relatively easy. They can drive the US
| system to attack you by screwing with your life from
| outside the US where you can't do anything to stop them.
| And that can be done in so many ways it's rather obscene.
| Let's talk about the IRS economic ways they could do it;
| let's talk about the child protective services way they
| could do it; let's talk about the no-knock SWAT raid way
| they could do it; let's talk about the way they could go
| after your identity and bank accounts; let's talk about
| how they could focus in on your job, boss, co-workers,
| etc. and try to make your life hell there; and on and on
| and on it goes.
|
| Yeah right. I dare anybody on HN to proclaim that, I want
| to see the supporting premise where the foreign party
| like Russia having all your info is not as big of a deal.
|
| The notion that the FBI would do worse things from that
| position than Russia would is absurd, given what we've
| seen out of Russia. And China is absolutely no different
| in terms of its willingness to attack the US
| opportunistically (the Obama Admin had to obtain a cease
| fire agreement with China in regards to aggressively
| attacking the US re hacking, recall).
|
| There are no chains at all on what Russia can do to screw
| with the US citizenry, given the information. And more
| advanced AI systems should make it even easier for them
| to do it in the near future.
|
| If Russia could push a button and blank out 30 million US
| bank accounts, via a hacking plausible deniability means
| (anything that gives them the required minimum cover),
| they'd do it immediately. There's so little downside from
| where Russia is sitting these days, it'd be a no-brainer
| for them. What are you gonna do? Sanction them? We're
| sure as hell not going to war with Russia over that.
| enterprise_cog wrote:
| So Russia having info is worse because they would then
| sick the overreaching and cruel US govt on you? You do
| see how silly that sounds, don't you? It proves the
| parent comment's point that we should be fearing our
| domestic government more than a foreign one.
|
| Imagine if the US wasn't a police state, and the average
| person had good social/financial protections. We'd make
| China and Russia powerless according to your logic.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| China has shown to have an international police force to
| enact their will overseas. They probably won't harm you,
| but they're inching closer. I would also be vaguely
| worried about them sharing data with other companies in
| China that slowly influence commerce in America.
|
| I support the ban from a competitive perspective. Until
| meta can spy on Chinese citizens, why should the Chinese
| spy on Americans?
|
| Also I support it from a privacy perspective. We can't as
| easily ban American companies from spying on us, but we
| should use any power to limit other companies from
| _starting_ business spying on Americans. Make it less
| profitable _globally_.
| sitkack wrote:
| The FBI is also global. https://www.fbi.gov/contact-
| us/international-offices
| johnnyworker wrote:
| Your own government is in theory accountable to you, a
| foreign government is not even in theory.
| josefresco wrote:
| China is building "police stations" worldwide to do just
| this. See their agreements with Fiji* and how that
| backfired when Chinese police showed up and rounded up
| 77+ "suspects" and basically abducted them.
|
| *https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ch
| ina-...
| imiric wrote:
| A ban on TikTok is not about the US government caring about
| their citizens. It's about a political enemy having access to
| data the US government also wants access to.
|
| If it was about preserving privacy or any moral argument, they
| would also ban domestic social media. They have no reason to do
| this since they already have access to domestic data.
|
| A second reason might be to mitigate foreign influence and
| propaganda, but this is also rampant on domestic social media,
| and they apparently have no desire to prevent this either. This
| seems ludicrous to me, as these tools are the primary weapons
| of information warfare.
| afiori wrote:
| Big brother does not like competition
| toasted-subs wrote:
| I can point out that as far as the result to our economy and
| health social media has been a dounle edged sword. I think
| people don't understand why you'd use and how to make it
| effective.
| miguelazo wrote:
| It's actually mostly about US tech companies (especially
| social media) being inferior in the market at this point.
| Most of the security concerns are actually just hyped up
| because Byte Dance ate their lunches.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > This undermines any moral authority
|
| The PATRIOT act does this by just existing and continually
| being extended. Room 641a. Julian Assange's case. Mortal
| authority left the building in the early 2000s.
| opo wrote:
| The PATRIOT act itself expired in March of 2020.
| Tommstein wrote:
| TIL. Unfortunate timing for what would have otherwise been
| front-page headline news, if not for the entire world as we
| otherwise knew it coming to a sudden crashing end.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It really didn't, though. Parts of it have already been
| reauthorized through different acts that are still in
| effect. Point is, we didn't have a referendum, we didn't
| bolster our laws to prevent such a thing from happening
| again, and zero investigations of abuses of power have
| credibly been done in it's wake.
|
| "Letting it expire" is not some accomplishment other than
| kicking the can further down the road.
| tlb wrote:
| During a hot war, it's reasonable to be more concerned about
| enemy surveillance than domestic surveillance. In either case,
| you lose some privacy. But enemy surveillance can cause you to
| lose the war, or at least for more people to die before
| winning.
|
| We aren't at war with China, but the possibility is taken
| seriously by the US foreign policy establishment, which knows
| more about the situation that you or I do. The most reliable
| way to avoid war is to be impossible to beat. So preempting the
| ability of potential enemies to collect data about our citizens
| reduces the chance of war.
| vasco wrote:
| I agree with this stance, it's naive to think that countries
| wouldn't prefer to block others from having as much
| information about their own citizens than themselves. This
| just seems like a reasonable position any government would
| adopt and defensive in nature as you point out. The
| discussion then can be on where you set the privacy bar for
| each case:
|
| - your country spying on your own citizens
|
| - your country spying on foreign citizens
|
| - other countries ability to spy on your own citizens
| karaterobot wrote:
| We don't do hot wars anymore, and peace is just (to
| paraphrase Paul Valery) the period during which you wage war
| by other means. We're _definitely_ in a conflict with China,
| it 's just not a gun-based conflict.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > We don't do hot wars anymore
|
| Afghanistan? The Iraq War? The people we drone strike every
| day?
| waffleiron wrote:
| Current hot "interventions" for those interested:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-
| led_intervention_in_t...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_military_interve
| ntion...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_military_interve
| ntion...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Yemen
| karaterobot wrote:
| Sorry, maybe my taxonomy is different. I mean a full-
| scale war, not whatever those were. A war with roughly
| equivalent militaries and economies, where there is a
| threat and war footing that might justify changing the
| lives of civilians and their relationship to their
| government. Technically, Congress hasn't declared war
| since 1942, even though we've been in some big ones since
| then, but that's not what I mean either. We probably need
| a broader vocabulary to describe the various uses of
| force in international relations, which distinguishes
| between war and military actions, however expensive.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| I think any context in which the US invades another
| country and kills a million civilians is a "hot war."
| Otherwise, you've gone so far down a "war is peace"
| rabbit hole that you're no longer in touch with reality.
| che_shirecat wrote:
| What did the US foreign policy establishment know about
| Afghanistan and Iraq than you or I do? Last I heard from
| reliable sources, Iraq had WMD's and were a clear and present
| danger? Why not just preempt China's nuclear capability too
| by nuking them?
| triceratops wrote:
| > What did the US foreign policy establishment know about
| Afghanistan
|
| That Osama was hiding there. Which he was, at the time. And
| that he had carried out 9/11. Which he did.
|
| The Irag and Afghanistan wars were not the same.
| Practically everyone supported the US in Afghanistan.
| Practically no one followed the US into Iraq.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think you are just making a rhetorical flourish, but we
| should be clear that Iraq didn't have WMDs, wasn't an
| urgent danger, and any sources that said they did should
| not be treated as reliable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _any sources that said they did should not be treated
| as reliable._
|
| American GEOINT, MASINT, SIGINT and TECHINT are likely
| the best in the world. American HUMINT, OSINT and--
| somewhat paradoxically--FININT are atrocious.
| Unfortunately, we frequently ascribe confidence intervals
| to our clandestine services based on experience with
| _e.g._ the NRO.
| yonaguska wrote:
| They might be the best in the world- but it doesn't
| matter because they don't answer to citizens. I trust
| that they have good information- I don't trust that good
| information gets to us, our politicians, etc.
| [deleted]
| echelon wrote:
| The government is auditing TikTok, not using TikTok to spy on
| US citizens.
|
| The US is trying to determine to what extent TikTok is a
| domestic security threat.
|
| CFIUS is an organ of the US government designed to prevent
| foreign intrusion that risks national security. That's the
| entity involved here. They don't touch ordinary US citizens.
|
| This is not _domestic_ spying. It 's investigating the
| capabilities of a foreign power on US soil.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Of course Snowden showed us that agencies regularly exceed
| their mandates. Why would that not be possible here?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| All I can tell you is I've worked for a company that had to
| comply with CFIUS agreement, and honestly, there are no
| surveillance capabilities whatsoever. They have oversight
| capabilities and can audit the parts of the business that
| are covered by the security rules. Ironically, these rules
| we had to comply with were called the National Security
| Agreement (NSA) but that entirely coincidental. It was not
| anywhere near as exciting as people commenting here are
| speculating.
| vGPU wrote:
| As usual, US government accusations against other countries
| turned out to involve a hefty dose of projection and "if I
| can't have it then nobody can".
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Isn't most of "surprising new vulnerabilities" NOBUS? (NObody
| BUt US)
|
| I didn't believe for a second that the MS Exchange
| vulnerability was not known & abused since forever. Now the
| Chinese have created what Zynga, Facebook, Pinterest, and the
| rest of the silicon valley failed to succeed. Get everyone
| meth-ed on an app. 150m Americans is nearly half the
| population. If you leave out the under 4 and the over 70,
| that's the majority of active population, having a homing
| beacon in their pocket reporting to China.
|
| This puts Room 641A to shame..
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| What about the last 80 years makes you think the US has any
| sort of moral authority.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > I support a domestic ban on TikTok
|
| I don't use any social media, so apologies if this is a dumb
| question. What is TikTok doing that other ones like YouTube,
| Instagram, Facebook isn't? The only difference I am seeing is
| that the parent company is China. Misinformation is omnipresent
| across all those channels too. So on what basis should we ban
| them?
| karaterobot wrote:
| No, you're correct: it being China is the main reason. And
| it's a sufficient reason for banning it in my mind: cyber
| warfare is real warfare. It is understood that the government
| is spying on users of social media (one of several reasons I
| don't use any either). It's embarrassing for them to admit
| it, and it undermines any other arguments they could try to
| make about it, though. If you are claiming a moral high
| ground, you can't just openly admit you're as bad as the
| other guy.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| How do you spy on users of social media? Are we talking
| surreptitiously getting access to cameras/microphone or
| just getting data on user behavior? The former is obviously
| a major issue, but the latter can be obtained by anyone
| because tracking for ads is so ubiquitous and China can
| just pay to get it.
| dleeftink wrote:
| Quite a few ways, whether through device/session
| fingerprinting [1], in-app browser keystroke tracking
| [2], frequent third-party post requests [3], individiual
| app usage patterns [4], geo-tracking [5], dark-patterned
| user onboarding [6] and continual facial recognition [7].
|
| A canary blog series kicked off by the company itself is
| worth keeping an eye on to see the 'myths' they want to
| debunk most scrupously (such as keytracking)[8].
|
| [1]: https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-
| vm-1
|
| [2]: https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-
| inappbrowsercom-see-wha...
|
| [3]: https://app.urlgeni.us/blog/new-research-
| across-200-ios-apps...
|
| [4]:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-
| alg...
|
| [5]: https://www.afr.com/technology/tiktok-admits-
| collecting-loca...
|
| [6]: https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_pol
| icymemo_...
|
| [7]: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/25/971460327/tiktok-to-
| pay-92-mi...
|
| [8]: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-truths-a-
| new-series...
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| Thank you, this is insightful.
| [deleted]
| Dig1t wrote:
| A: Funneling data from its users directly to the CCP (Chinese
| Communist Party). Corps in China have a special relationship
| with the government, unlike the US. A CCP party member
| accompanies the CEO and is present for major decisions.
| Often, company policies are dictated by the government and
| handed down by the party member assigned to the company. The
| CCP has access to the data that companies collect, which
| includes all the data generated by American citizens. This
| does not only include the video content, but location
| information and any other kinds of device fingerprinting they
| can come up with.
|
| B: TikTok has different algorithms for different countries,
| the algorithm in China is tuned to show young people science,
| technology, and inspirational content, which was dictated by
| the CCP. The US algorithm shows young people anything that
| will keep them "engaged", which usually includes ragebait and
| all kinds of unhealthy things.
| pessimizer wrote:
| US "ex-"spooks are overwhelmingly dominant at all US social
| media companies.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I'm assuming you mean like "ex-FBI" or "ex-CIA".
|
| You're totally right and that is a huge problem as well.
| But I would say a slightly different one.
| orangepurple wrote:
| > You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is
| spying on your citizens
|
| The state ran media calling actually peaceful american flag
| waving re-opening protestors terrorists and murderers for
| spreading COVID, then literally a matter of days later called
| the costliest riots in U.S history mostly peaceful protests
| that were incapable of spreading COVID. This was probably the
| sign that it was all over and we had entered the biological
| terrorism era.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| The text indicates that they are trying to spy on the company,
| not the users. And this is a logical attempt if you don't trust
| the companies masters. Isn't china basically doing the same
| with every company, just in other ways?
| miguelazo wrote:
| >You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is
| spying on your citizens.
|
| This is so naive. Let me introduce you to the security
| industrial complex.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Make no mistake - western governments are envious of the spying
| tools that China has. Our freedoms are in spite of central
| government and thanks to an independent judiciary and wise
| founders. Some like Trudeau have even explicitly expressed
| admiration for the flexibility of the Chinese dictatorship.
| FBI, CIA, etc. would never decline to use the types of tools
| that China has.
| Gud wrote:
| What do you mean, envious? I thought it was long since
| established that the US does the same to their so called
| citizens.
|
| https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
| freedomben wrote:
| You don't think China has and uses tools that the US can't?
| That they're at the same level?
|
| I'm a major fan/paying contributor to the EFF, but that
| seems absurd to me. We don't have to equate the US with
| China in order to say the US is doing terrible things and
| needs to stop. In fact doing so just distracts from the
| issue by changing it into an argument about something else.
| Gud wrote:
| The US intelligence agencies is literally copying all the
| traffic from every US citizen(except maybe if you're some
| elite sorcerer wizard hacker) in real time and have been
| doing so for almost two decades. They have the same
| capabilities as China.
|
| And yes, the US and China are not the same. But they both
| have the same capabilities. Parent poster argued that the
| Chinese government had a greater capacity to spy on their
| citizens("better tools"). I simply pointed out that it's
| false.
| freedomben wrote:
| IIRC it was just the metadata (which is still a very big
| deal ftr) not all the bytes. Also you would have to
| believe that they have compromised AES/RSA/etc in order
| to break the encryption.
|
| China also has a lot more surveillance and filtering
| controls, especially with traffic leaving/entering the
| great firewall. They have the social credit system and
| things as well, which the US _could_ have with credit
| card and banking information, but (at least for now) the
| US has to get a warrant whereas the Chinese just gobble
| all of it up. That 's probably moot though since the
| banks will store that info forever so a warrant can be
| gotten later. Anyway we could debate whether those are
| "tools" or not. But overall I'd bet we agree on the vast
| majority of things. Even if I think you're being a bit
| hyperbolic, it always makes me happy to see other people
| passionate about this topic, so thank you!
| Gud wrote:
| And here I was thinking I wasn't hyperbolic enough! Have
| a nice day
| toasted-subs wrote:
| With all of china's spying you guys are terrible at building
| things effectively. I wonder what the US will do.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| The US government has all the same tools, they're just called
| "tech companies" and state doesn't administer them directly
| for the sake of appearances.
| Gud wrote:
| Make no mistake - the US state has these tools as well.
| They just let the tech companies do most of their dirty
| work.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _FBI, CIA, etc. would never decline to use the types of tools
| that China has._
|
| That's just the kind of overheated hyperbole derailing so
| many of our civic discussions nowadays.
|
| FBI and CIA have far more effective tools at their disposal.
| They'd nearly always decline to use the journeyman tools
| China has in its cyber arsenal.
| miguelazo wrote:
| >FBI and CIA have far more effective tools at their
| disposal.
|
| Go read Spyfail. What a joke.
| Mavvie wrote:
| The actual quote:
|
| > There's a level of admiration I actually have for China.
| Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn
| their economy around on a dime.
|
| I don't think that's wrong? Although it is certainly in bad
| taste for a prime minister.
| vosper wrote:
| > There's a level of admiration I actually have for China.
| Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn
| their economy around on a dime.
|
| It's wrong, too - the Chinese economy is in trouble, and
| has been since Covid. Xi has accumulated more autocratic
| power, but if he's able to use it to "turn their economy
| around on a dime" then he's not doing so.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Of course that's bad. You cant justify dictatorships with
| good intentions.
| Micrococonut wrote:
| What about with good outcomes?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "The King is happy on his Throne, and the people are
| pleased" obviously winning in battle is a good outcome,
| since your enemies are now dead or slaved.
|
| "Rome demands victory from her Generals" .. and those who
| tried and failed, were publicly killed. As they still do
| in China actually.
|
| we can do better than this
| ffhhttt wrote:
| I'm not sure Romans really did that.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| If some of those ever manifest themselves, I may
| reconsider.
| FreshStart wrote:
| What about a poster of good outcomes in front of a
| dystopia?
| godelski wrote:
| [dead]
| yieldcrv wrote:
| the list of similarities masqueraded as differences is pretty
| large
|
| one example:
|
| arbitrary seizure of private property? turns out that isn't
| just the domain of pretend communists, its a tenet of our
| society too
| thefbi wrote:
| I'll just ask a simple question, if you are an American citizen
| which governments uniformed thugs have the ability to kidnap or
| kill you: the American or Chinese government? Which of these
| does not even need to send secret agents or beat your country
| in a war and has free legal permission to kidnap and kill you?
|
| If you computed the results of this problem, the next question
| I ask is whom are you at more risk from?
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| If you have ties to China, without question it's the Chinese
| government. They will go after your family back in China for
| what you say and do in the US.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I do and so far they haven't.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I have seen a lot more cases of the CCP disappearing people
| than I ever have from the US Government.
| sitkack wrote:
| Is that a measurement problem? Is that a boosted story
| issue? Propaganda is delivered via an equalizer that boosts
| and suppresses different dimensions of reality.
| loonginthetooth wrote:
| Look I'm all for reminding people that the US government
| has done a lot of awful stuff, but..
|
| No. It's not a measurement problem or a propaganda issue.
| It's just the truth. USG just literally doesn't
| 'disappear' US residents in modern times. It happens with
| nontrivial frequency in China.
| [deleted]
| pb7 wrote:
| I trust my government to not infringe on my free speech but I
| don't trust that another government that doesn't have good
| diplomatic relations with mine doesn't detain me if I happen
| to fly through one of their airports because of my beliefs. I
| avoid China and Chinese airlines because I don't feel like
| censoring myself on the internet. Luckily China doesn't have
| too many allies.
|
| For reference:
|
| https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/overseas-
| chinese-1021...
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-
| china...
|
| https://www.thecollegefix.com/ccp-targeted-chinese-
| students-...
| toasted-subs wrote:
| I think that's a other huge reason to not let China into
| our kid's hands. If it was a country that is well known for
| building and maintaining diplomatic relationships that
| would be great.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| [flagged]
| thefbi wrote:
| The Chinese police has little to no power to arrest you if
| you are an American citizen while you are in America,
| legally not at all, and practically they would need to
| expend great effort to do so. The American police has a
| "god gifted" power to arrest and kill you while you are in
| America, both legally and practically. These are simple,
| plain facts of the geopolitics and how governments are
| organized.
|
| Moreover any such Chinese agents if caught will go through
| some rather unpleasant processes, does not seem usually the
| case for American cops even brazenly caught in various
| misdeeds.
| [deleted]
| pb7 wrote:
| >while you are in America
|
| I'm not talking about while I'm in America. I travel
| outside of the country.
|
| If the CCP can make billionaires disappear, they can make
| you disappear too.
| thefbi wrote:
| Of course the CCP is your biggest threat when you are in
| their territory, just like how the American government is
| your biggest threat back home. Actually not even only in
| your home, given its extraditionary powers which I
| haven't checked but should be one of the stronger ones
| when it comes to 'extradited to usa'. Either case, on
| American territory and especially as an American citizen,
| the American police and American government is your
| biggest threat vs any other foreign power.
| pb7 wrote:
| Again, I don't have a choice in the matter if I want to
| live in the US. But I don't have to open myself up to
| authoritarian governments who have a track record for
| targeting those who participate in free speech in other
| countries.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| And also, you do have influence, as one of the citizens
| by whose consent the government governs. Not so much with
| countries you aren't citizen of.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-
| illega...
|
| > Two Arrested for Operating Illegal Overseas Police Station
| of the Chinese Government
| thefbi wrote:
| And how many do your governments officially stamped thugs
| arrest? You don't even need to look up any stats to guess
| its in the ballpark of thousands or perhaps even the
| million per year.
|
| Edit: example stats for 2016 sourced from https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
|
| In 2016, there were an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes
| committed in the United States.[88] Over the course of that
| year, U.S. law enforcement agencies made approximately 10.7
| million arrests, excluding arrests for traffic
| violations.[88] In that year, approximately 2.3 million
| people were incarcerated in jail or prison.[89]
| hedora wrote:
| Also, which steals more of your stuff, on average? This
| Washington Post article's title offers a clue: "Cops took
| more stuff from people than burglars did last year."
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/co
| ps-...
|
| The article is from 2015, but nothing's been done to
| reverse the trend. I wonder what they've gotten the ratio
| up to in the last eight years.
| thefbi wrote:
| Its almost tautological and by definition that your local
| government has legally granted power (might even say
| monopoly practically speaking) for violence and
| kidnapping over you. A distant foreign government has to
| expend great resources to do the same for you which your
| government would do with a stroke of the pen. Sometimes
| even without that thin veneer.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > tautological and by definition
|
| That's redundant and repetitive.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| If you want to be incredibly pedantic, something can be
| tautological without being part of the definition, and
| something can be part of the definition without being
| tautological (by way of contradiction).
| [deleted]
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You are 100% correct, but I'm not surprised in the least to
| hear about this.
| echelon wrote:
| They are not in fact 100% correct. CFIUS doesn't have
| authority over or interest in ordinary US citizens. They are
| 100% concerned with foreign intrusion of national security.
| That's their singular mandate.
|
| This is an auditing operation to determine the extent to
| which TikTok is a national security threat.
| scarmig wrote:
| CFIUS closely works with US intelligence agencies. That in
| itself isn't damning. But it also bears pointing out that
| the NSA also doesn't have authority over or interest in
| ordinary US citizens and is ostensibly 100% concerned with
| foreign intrusion of national security. Actual activities
| can and do go much further than intelligence agencies'
| public mandate.
| Kalium wrote:
| I would be surprised and upset if CFIUS did _not_ work
| closely with intelligence agencies. CFIUS is an agency
| charged with risk mitigation from foreign actors. Doing
| that effectively requires good information and risk
| assessments. If CFIUS did not work closely with
| intelligence agencies, they would either be incapable of
| performing their function or running their own
| intelligence agency.
| fidotron wrote:
| Can only think the feds regret not banning it long before anyone
| had heard of it. Suspect any new pretenders will not be so lucky.
|
| Edit to add: "and veto the hiring of any executive involved with
| leading TikTok US data security organization" - this is
| dangerously close to saying the quiet bit out loud.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >"and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading
| TikTok US data security organization"
|
| Actually, all that does is allow the US gov the same level of
| control of tiktok that the CCP does.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "Can only think the feds regret not banning it long before
| anyone had heard of it"
|
| But if no one has heard of it, then no one would be using it.
| Why would you ban something that no one is using...
| fidotron wrote:
| Because we follow a Rules Based Order and our Rules apply
| fairly to all market participants.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Yes, and the first and most important of those rules -- the
| rule that more than any other sets us apart from
| totalitarian states like China -- begins with the phrase
| "Congress shall make no law."
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| And the rule that Tik Tok is clearly breaking is what?
| Being Chinese?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _And the rule that Tik Tok is clearly breaking is what?
| Being Chinese?_
|
| Being indistinguishable from state owned / CCP controlled
| at a time of fraying diplomatic relationships and
| heightening military tensions with China.
| fidotron wrote:
| Not being owned by us.
|
| I wish this was merely a facetious response as opposed to
| the literal version of what the rule actually is.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Not being owned by us._
|
| We'd be fine if Bytedance were European, Australian,
| Japanese or even Indian. This is a problem with Russia
| and China, belligerent autocracies with whom our chances
| of near-term military confrontation is elevated.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Wowza, it's clear Feds weren't interested in preventing spying so
| much as to start themselves.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Examine TikTok's U.S. facilities, records, equipment and
| servers with minimal or no notice,
|
| > Block changes to the app's U.S. terms of service, moderation
| policies and privacy policy,
|
| > Veto the hiring of any executive involved in leading TikTok's
| U.S. Data Security org,
|
| > Order TikTok and ByteDance to pay for and subject themselves to
| various audits, assessments and other reports on the security of
| TikTok's U.S. functions, and,
|
| > In some circumstances, require ByteDance to temporarily stop
| TikTok from functioning in the United States.
|
| Knowing that TikTok keeps lying about CCP ties and data security
| this seems like a way to keep them honest? This doesn't list any
| domestic spying features.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The "agreement would let agencies examine TikTok's US
| facilities, records, and servers." That's broad enough to
| warrant abuse of search privileges.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Presumably Byte Dance is already required to respond to NSLs
| and warrants. LEOs don't want to have to sift through raw
| dumps of raw data -- they want nice search interfaces. Intel
| agencies, on the other hand, almost certainly want raw data,
| but would prefer continuing feeds over one-time or occasional
| dumps, so getting to "examine TikTok's US facilities,
| records, and servers" doesn't seem all that interesting.
|
| So my take is that "agreement would let agencies examine
| TikTok's US facilities, records, and servers" is specifically
| to enable the audits also mentioned in TFA.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Presumably Byte Dance is already required to respond to
| NSLs and warrants_
|
| There is a legitimate concern about ByteDance honestly
| responding to said orders. Wanting to double check first
| hand isn't a ridiculous ask. What seems an overstep is
| wanting to do so with zero oversight.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > What seems an overstep is wanting to do so with zero
| oversight.
|
| Huh? Congress can do its oversight duty anytime it wants
| to.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Congress can do its oversight duty anytime it wants
| to_
|
| This is a terrible mode of executive oversight,
| particularly when it comes to something like warrantless
| search. Congressional oversight pertains to entire
| frameworks, not particulars of specific searches.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| How else does one prove that TikTok is true to their word
| about data safety and separating their data from China? What
| makes you think that the ability to examine their facilities
| sidesteps the need for courts and warrants?
|
| I'm not buying the alarmist angle here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What makes you think that the ability to examine their
| facilities sidesteps the need for courts and warrants?_
|
| Nothing sidesteps the legal need. But I'm seeing no
| evidence that these agreements contemplate any oversight.
| If the agent doing the examining decides to simultaneously
| look up an American's TikTok account, nothing would stop
| them. (I agree the tone of this discussion is alarmist.)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >If the agent doing the examining decides to
| simultaneously look up an American's TikTok account,
| nothing would stop them.
|
| And this is a concern because? They already have
| everything tiktok could give them. They shouldn't, but
| they do.
| neilv wrote:
| The bulletpoints from the original Forbes reporting
| ("https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-
| white/2023/08/21/dra...") look _not_ like domestic spying, but
| more like close oversight of a party who isn 't trusted but can't
| be shut down. With possible exception of this one:
|
| > * _Examine TikTok's U.S. facilities, records, equipment and
| servers with minimal or no notice,_
|
| Such as if it includes arbitrary access to user data, or
| opportunity to modify the systems rather than only examine.
|
| Forbes included this interesting other bit, separate from its
| bulletpoint list, and I didn't see Gizmodo mention it:
|
| > _It would also force TikTok U.S. to exclude ByteDance leaders
| from certain security-related decision making, and instead rely
| on an executive security committee that would operate in secrecy
| from ByteDance._
|
| BTW, why is Forbes calling this a "free speech platform"? Is that
| now accepted terminology, or is there some spin they're
| promoting?
|
| > _Were it to be finalized, the agreement would provide the
| government near unfettered access to internal TikTok information
| and unprecedented control over essential functions that it does
| not have over any other major free speech platform._
|
| Is the explanation really as simple as:
|
| > _Forbes ( /fo:rbz/) is an American business magazine founded in
| 1917 and owned by the Hong Kong-based investment group Integrated
| Whale Media Investments since 2014.[3][4]_
|
| I'm inclined to think that the best defense against hypothetical
| threats from an app like this is a smart, critical-thinking,
| principled citizenry. But since Rupert Murdoch, and the culture
| that followed, have decimated that capability, maybe we need more
| help from government.
| kornhole wrote:
| This is worse than the threats to Facebook and Twitter to revoke
| section 230. NATO and other Natsec employees penetrated TikTok
| long ago as reported by Alan Macleod.
| https://www.mintpressnews.com/?s=tiktok
| resuresu wrote:
| [flagged]
| jwestbury wrote:
| Recruiters mostly pitch me on "working for TikTok," because
| that's where the name recognition is. No doubt this is even
| more true for people reading Gizmodo.
| PreachSoup wrote:
| The title should be changed to the Feds asked a company in
| China to spy on American citizens
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The title should be changed to "Feds ask company to prove
| they are not lying again about CCP ties."
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| Slowly but surely, I'm beginning to learn that whenever a US
| government agency has a problem with something, the problem isn't
| that they are genuinely concerned about the thing they say they
| are, the problem is they aren't the ones benefiting from it.
| air7 wrote:
| Do we know what/how TikTok is "spying"? I mean it _is_ just an
| app running on a mobile device just like any other app. What data
| does it collect that the feds would like to get their hands on?
| Perhaps the ban should be on the ability of any app to collect
| this data in the first place?
| sitkack wrote:
| Location, FoaF graph, kinds of things people engage with. It
| isn't just for direct spying but getting access to cliques. If
| you know your targets cook likes special kind of porn, you now
| have leverage to get an APT installed on machine close to the
| target. People's defenses are down when the lower brain is
| motivated.
| computing wrote:
| Ban it for reciprocal reasons.
|
| Either China allows FB, Google, Instagram, X, etc to operate
| there.
|
| Or we ban TikTok here.
|
| Countries already have unfair competition protections, this would
| fall under that.
| slim wrote:
| reciprocal would be for china to request direct access to
| facebook servers and veto for it's executives
| computing wrote:
| here you go, comrade -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-
| pr...
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| The CIA and, by extension, the US government as a whole have
| never altered the outcome of elections anywhere for regime
| change, and have never instigated color revolutions for regime
| change.
| electrondood wrote:
| TikTok is brain cancer.
| accrual wrote:
| TikTok has had nothing but positive effects for me. I mostly
| subscribe to intellectual content, positivity, and things that
| I feel improve my mental health. TikTok is what you make of it.
| DrThunder wrote:
| It's positive in the same way eating a bunch of sugary donuts
| gives you a temporary short lasting dopamine boost. It's
| easily digestible with zero nutritional value. Rapid videos
| in succession short video formats that inject you with a
| quick dopamine hit are in fact NOT good for your mental
| health. This is why you see people continuously swipe for
| hours a day There are plenty of studies showing this.
|
| You're just rewiring your brain in a way that it'll want
| easily obtained dopamine with zero work. This leads to a
| rebound effect where you'll become bored quickly and
| depressed without it (similar to a recovering addict)
|
| It's not really "what you make of it".
| accrual wrote:
| That might be your experience but it's not mine. A have a
| lot of really excellent thoughtful content in my feed. I
| take notes and often save images (long press > save image)
| for future reference. If it had no value, I wouldn't be
| sitting here feeling like I've benefited from all the new
| perspectives I've received.
|
| The format doesn't dictate the content nor what one can get
| from it.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Same. The TikTok algorithm did more to fix my mental health
| post-lockdown than multiple therapists or any other social
| media. Rather than being tuned for maximal negativity it
| seems ByteDance tuned the algorithm for maximal positivity.
| infamouscow wrote:
| I too can make silly unsubstantiated statements that break
| rather than bend under the slightest scrutiny.
| veave wrote:
| Maybe so, but thankfully you don't have to use it if you don't
| like it.
| Transpire7487 wrote:
| Of course, spying on Americans is only bad when the scary CCP
| does it.
| tgv wrote:
| This arguments keeps popping up, but yes, it's not good when
| another country does it. You've got no say in it, and it can
| only be used for nefarious purposes. You've got no idea what
| your own government is using that info for, but you can be sure
| that the CCP is not going to prevent terrorism in your country.
|
| You also can't vote Xi out of office, can you? You can however
| vote the politicians that are responsible for domestic spying
| out of office, or try to press them into being transparent and
| implementing proper legislation through various means.
|
| Don't pretend the two are equal. The only thing equal between
| them is that you don't like either.
| Transpire7487 wrote:
| The US intelligence community is responsible for more
| terrorism within America than any it may have prevented.
|
| You can't get rid of them through voting, the next president
| will just install another stooge and the cycle will continue.
|
| The FBI spied on Trump's campaign, he "cleaned house",
| Christopher Wray is just as bad as James Comey. It can't be
| fixed. Merrick Garland is just as bad as Bill Barr. It needs
| to be abolished.
| steno132 wrote:
| I'm not seeing any "spying" here. What the government is
| requesting is a audit capability, similar to what the FDA has for
| domestic food manufacturers.
|
| The FDA can inspect food plants, and if in the public interest,
| shut them down temporarily.
|
| Let me ask this, without this power how do you propose the
| government hold TikTok accountable for anything?
| advisedwang wrote:
| The agreement would give feds ability to "Examine TikTok's U.S.
| facilities, records, equipment and servers", which no doubt
| includes user data. So it's not like being able to audit a food
| manufacturer. It would be like also having the ability to find
| out which consumer ate every bite of of the food, their
| reactions, what meals it was part of, where they ate it, who
| they shared their food with etc.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| What are the feds going to do with all these cat meme videos?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| So basically this is another Joe Nacchio situation?
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