The Crisis Report - 30
On the TikTok Panic.
So,
In the US we are having a major meltdown over the fact that one of the most popular social media apps in the world is not “made in the USA”. Absolutely no evidence has been presented that TikTok is in any way a “security risk” but a TikTok ban in the US is becoming more and more likely.
US cyber spymaster calls TikTok China’s ‘Trojan horse’
TikTok is China’s “Trojan horse,” according to Rob Joyce, who heads the cyber security unit of America’s National Security Agency.
This is a serious accusation. If another country declared that Facebook, or Instagram, or Meta, or Google, or YouTube, or any of the other top social media companies was a “Trojan horse” and banned it. The US would retaliate against them.
Joyce, speaking at the Silverado Policy Accelerator’s conference on Monday, called TikTok “a strategic issue.” What does he mean by that, what’s his evidence?
Is China using TikTok to attack the US?
Well, no. But it’s not about what they are doing, it’s about what they “could” do.
We live with day-to-day cyber threats the US spy agency wards off from nation-state actors like the North Koreans, the Russians, and cyber crime gangs looking to make a buck from business email compromise attacks and ransomware infections. Those things are happening “in reality” but that’s not what this is about.
It’s not about what this company based in China is actually doing in the “real world”. It’s about what the Chinese government “might do” in the future.
“Why would you bring the Trojan horse inside the fortress,” Joyce said. “Why would you bring that capability into the US?”
Joyce’s statements come as the country’s new National Cybersecurity Strategy describes China as the “broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks.”
In case you missed it, earlier this month the US released a new National Cybersecurity Strategy. If it gets adopted it will drastically change your life.
The long-awaited National Cybersecurity Strategy calls for:
Adopting minimum security standards for critical infrastructure owners and operators.
Holding software companies liable for security flaws in their products.
Using “all instruments of national power to disrupt and dismantle threat actors” that threaten US and public safety.
THIS IS HUGE.
The liability for “security flaws” portion of the proposal could cost existing American companies billions. Going forward, it will almost certainly have a “chilling” effect on the whole US software industry.
Because, software is inherently “not secure”. The only “secure systems” are systems that are not connected to anything else, running “custom software” that only exists on that system. Mass market systems and software ALWAYS have security flaws.
Frequently they also have “back-doors” as well.
US says China can spy with TikTok. The US spies on world with Google
Lawmakers’ push to ban the app comes as they mull extending powers that force tech firms to facilitate mass snooping for the United States.
During a five-hour grilling of the TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chewweek, United States lawmakers RANTED against the possibility of China using the wildly popular, partly Chinese-owned app to spy on Americans. Here’s what Kevin McCarthy had to say.
It’s very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know to be true — China has access to TikTok user data. The House will be moving forward with legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party.
Here’s what the US does. At the SAME time that we are BANNING the use of TikTok and spreading “Fear-Uncertainty-and Doubt” (FUD) about it being a “Trojan Horse”.
Lawmakers are also weighing the renewal of powers that force firms like Google, Meta and Apple to facilitate spying on non-US citizens located overseas.
The US government uses US tech companies that effectively control the global internet to spy on everyone else.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allows US intelligence agencies to carry out warrantless spying on foreigners’ email, phone and other online communications.
While US citizens have some protections against warrantless searches under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, the US government has maintained that these rights do not extend to foreigners overseas. This convenient interpretation of “privacy” allows agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) practically free rein to snoop on the communications of everyone in the world who isn’t a US citizen.
Do as we say, not as we do.
Or, one set of rules for America and the rest of the world has to accept that America “owns” the internet FOREVER.
Right now, Washington enjoys an advantage not shared by any other country. We have jurisdiction and control over the handful of companies that effectively run the modern internet, including Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
For billions of internet users outside the US, the lack of privacy mirrors the alleged threat that US officials say TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, poses to Americans.
It’s a case of “rules for thee but not for me”.
The noise the Americans are making about TikTok must be seen less as a sincere desire to protect citizens from surveillance and influence operations, and more as an attempt to ring-fence and consolidate national control over social media.
Asher Wolf — Tech researcher and privacy advocate based in Melbourne, Australia.
So, why do we want to “ban” TikTok?
During the hearings this week, the Republicans focused on and kept bringing up one thing as “proof” TikTok was “working” for the Chinese Communist Party.
A Chinese law that requires local companies to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work”.
Which is somehow (?) a totally different situation from what we do under Section 702 of the FISA Act.
In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, the US targeted 232,432 “non-US persons” for surveillance, according to government data.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimates that the US government has collected more than one billion communications per year since 2011, based on how the number of targets has grown since that year.
Although intended to target communications between foreigners, Section 702 in practice also captures the communications of US citizens who interact with foreigners. For example, if you write a friend in England, you can be sure that the NSA has scanned it looking for “trigger words”
The NSA and CIA are allowed to carry out what critics describe as “backdoor” warrantless searches of US citizens’ communications that are collected incidentally if they believe it will yield information about foreign intelligence. The FBI can also search through these communications, but is required to obtain a warrant for criminal investigations not related to national security.
But hey, we are the US, our motives are pure. We PROMISE to only use our powers for GOOD and only to fight EVIL PEOPLE. You can trust America, China is EVIL.
While US officials insist that American “spying” on the rest of the world is ONLY focused on national security threats. Civil liberties advocates say “foreign intelligence” could include effectively any communications. Including those of journalists, human rights advocates, and ordinary citizens deemed of interest to the US government.
The problem is that fundamentally the standard is extremely low, it’s a very broad authority. Targets do not have to be suspected of any crime. They don’t have to have any connection to terrorism. They can be journalists. They can be human rights workers abroad.
-Ashley Gorski, lawyer at the ACLU’s National Security Project.
They’re making a big stink about TikTok and the Chinese collecting data when the US is collecting a great deal of data itself. It’s ironic for the US to trumpet citizens’ privacy concerns or worries about surveillance. It’s OK for them to collect the data, but they don’t want China to collect it.”
-Jonathan Hafetz, an expert on US constitutional law and national security at Seton Hall University.
So,
Americans are hypocrites and liars and the rest of the world is supposed to just “do what we tell them to do”, no questions asked when it comes to China and Chinese companies.
The question still remains, is TikTok a “threat”?
Let's go back to what the American “cybersecurity spymaster” has to say.
The TikTok threat that Joyce is referring to isn’t overt spying on devices that have installed the popular social media and dance video app. Nor is it the possibility of Chinese snoops stealing data stored on the sites servers. Although these concerns have been used to ban the app on state employees’ devices around the world.
France bans all recreational apps — including TikTok — from government devices.
UK.gov bans TikTok from its devices as a ‘precaution’ over spying fears.
Gov staff using it on personal mobes just fine… it’s not like ministers use WhatsApp etc for business … oh wait.
Canada bans TikTok on government devices over security risks
New Zealand lawmakers banned from TikTok amid data use fears.
E.U. Officials Ban TikTok From Employees’ Phones.
The European Commission took aim at the popular Chinese-owned app, citing “cybersecurity threats.”
With India’s TikTok Ban, the World’s Digital Walls Grow Higher.
Censorship and politics are fracturing the global internet, isolating users and industries accustomed to ignoring national borders.
These actions, all by allies the US has pressured into banning TikTok and India, are bans on TikTok for doing EXACTLY the same thing US and Indian companies do all the time.
What’s different about TikTok?
Can you say “Chinese Ownership” and prejudice.
The TikTok ban is a betrayal of the open internet.
There’s cause for alarm with TikTok — but is it enough to justify building America’s own Great Firewall?
Joyce thinks TikTok should be banned in the US basically because of its influence “on the children”.
Joyce believes that TikTok is a subtle, “weapon of Culture War”. He argues that it shows Beijing’s willingness to play the long game and use information operations as an offensive “soft power” cyber strategy.
Beijing could “manipulate the data” that Americans see, including presenting “divisive materials.” This may unduly influence Americans political and social leanings.
Being fair, China has done this previously with campaigns of anti-American content on topics including the US government’s COVID-19 response, racial inequality, gun violence, crime, and inflation. The US has a similar operation to present “pro-America” news and “spread Democracy”. It’s called the “Voice of America”.
As of 2022, VOA has a weekly worldwide audience of approximately 326 million (up from 236.6 million in 2016) and employs 961 staff with annual budget of $252 million.
Beijing’s leaders could also use TikTok to promote their own agenda by removing videos “that paint them in a bad light” to the American people. Case in point: using spambots to obfuscate news about rioters protesting the Chinese government’s coronavirus restrictions.
Joyce and others think TikTok is somehow “different”.
Podcast host, author, and New York University Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway on a recent episode of political chat show Real Time with Bill Maher also called for a TikTok ban this weekend.
Here’s what Galloway said on the show, and you can watch him on this Twitter clip:
Imagine a brain jack inserted into the neural network of two-thirds of our youth under the age of 25 who spend more time on TikTok than any other media source combined. Then imagine how easy it would be to put your thumb on the scale of anti-American content and recognize that they would be stupid not to elegantly, insidiously, covertly raise a generation of American civic, nonprofit, military, government leaders who, day by day minute by minute, just feel a little shittier about America.
If we had that tool in China, we would do the exact same thing. This is a defense threat.
According to Joyce, TikTok gives the Chinese government “a tremendous strategic capability.” It’s not a smoking gun, but rather “a loaded gun,” he warns.
You can read their strategies about the threats they pose — not today, not tomorrow, but they’re thinking five, 10, 20 years out. These are the types of tools that are going to give them the advantage on those time horizons. So don’t provide it to them.
That’s the “THREAT” the American Cybersecurity Spymaster thinks is “justification” for banning a Social Media platform used by 150 Million people in the US. FEAR that somehow, using a platform the US security agencies cannot control, will corrupt the “youth under the age of 25”.
The concrete benefit of America banning TikTok for all citizens is dubious.
From a privacy perspective, much of what Chinese authorities would likely want from TikTok (including very detailed geolocation data) is readily available from American data brokers.
Phones are already little surveillance machines with or without TikTok, and there are countless other ways to get information off of them. So far, there’s more concrete evidence of Tim Hortons secretly tracking the average app user than TikTok.
The claims that TikTok will become a covert Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda channel are possible but hypothetical.
According to leaked documents, TikTok has clearly had moderation biases at various parts of its lifespan, but they’ve seemed to be a kind of bland “don’t worry be happy” positivity instead of any specific national agenda. Tiananmen Square videos were apparently suppressed at one point, but so was criticizing any governmental system.
Its clearest censorship drive is against sex, drugs, and violence. Which certainly aligns with the CCP but also describes what lots of Americans want from social media. Trumpublican lawmakers asked multiple times at the hearing why TikTok wasn’t banning those things in the US as well as its Chinese counterpart Douyin allegedly does.
The same people who argue that TikTok should be banned because its “Chinese Version” won’t carry information critical of the Chinese government want TikTok to “step up” its efforts to censor what you can see in the US.
If that seems like HYPOCRISY to you, congratulations, you are now “Anti-American”. Because, in our War with China, the first casualty has been the Truth.
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
— rc 03292