Comment by stevenAthompson

- harvesting data: sure the CCP could buy some data from data brokers; but that data is very limited compared to the data that TikTok itself has on its users

but data harvesting is not the real problem

the big problem is that you have a social network to which millions of your citizens are connected and used daily, which is under the control of a foreign adversary; it's a bit like if CBS was owned by the CCP

That's a convenient fig leaf.

There are 2 separate problems:

   - Lack of US privacy legislation
   - Security-sensitive systems and infrastructure owned by competitor nations

PS: Curious how many total comments there are on this article. Either everyone is 3x as likely to comment on it as usual or something else is different. Ijs.

It's less about bare privacy and more about the fact that it's a closed loop system.

Meta collects your data and advertisers can indirectly use that data to serve you ads. In addition, government actors can use Meta's advertising tools to spread propaganda.

But TikTok is an all-in-one solution. The government have direct control over the algorithm in addition to having access to all of the data. They don't have to go through a third party intermediary like Meta and aren't only limited by a public advertising API.

I doubt it is about data. It should be about digital heroin and psychological warfare.

The value is in the ability to influence what your enemy sees, and to push whatever narratives are best for you and worst for your enemy. They don’t give a shit about the data.

> American companies have been doing the job for them.

This right here is the answer. People just don’t care about this type of privacy because they assume some American company already has their data. Combine that with us being two generations removed from the Cold War and the average TikTok user doesn’t see any reason why the owner of this specific data being Chinese matters and frankly I’m sympathetic to that argument. If you live in the US, someone like Musk is going to have a greater influence on your life than the Chinese government and I see no reason to trust him any more or less than the Chinese government. So any discussion of this being a matter of national security just rings hollow.

it's not just about data harvesting, it's about propaganda as well, and no, you can't "just buy" as much data as tiktok gathers on people, tiktok most likely has some of the richest data gathered from users, because they can get away with it.

I am in favor of banning TikTok, but not strictly because they harvest data. I am far more concerned about them manipulating people on a large scale, I think TikTok is an effective tool for manipulating public opinion and I have no doubt that they're actively engaged and consciously engaging America in a form of psychological warfare. We are facing the very real threat of a military conflict with China, I do not want the Chinese government in this position of power.

I frankly don't understand why I keep seeing on social media people like yourselves push the idea that it's okay because other companies are also harvesting the data. It is obviously not about the data. It is about China being in a position to manipulate information flow.

For anyone reading this who is knowledgeable about this topic, where, specifically, can a regular citizen buy personal data about people from data brokers?

I mean let's not pretend that an app on the vast majority of peoples phones isn't a non-trivial vector for a zero-day attack.

If there is an invasion of Taiwan, I don't think it would be unthinkable that everyone's phones being broken wouldn't be a major tactical and political advantage of shifting the US's priorities and political will in the short run.

Sure, it burns the asset in the process, but I mean... this has been a priority for an entire century.

> just buy the data from a broker

A surprising (and funny) example of this is how the open-source intelligence community and sites like Bellingcat used purchased or leaked data from private Russian commercial data brokers to identify and track the detailed movements of elite Russian assassination squads inside Russia as well as in various other countries. They learned the exact buildings where they go to work every day as well as who they met with and their home addresses. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-bellingcat-unmas...

Volunteer open-source researchers also used these readily available data sources to identify and publicly out several previously unknown Russian sleeper agents who'd spent years hiding in Western countries while building cover identities and making contacts. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-j...

To your point, if volunteer internet hobbyists can use commercial broker data to identify and track elite Russian assassins and undercover sleeper agents, in Russia and around the world, China having direct access to US Tiktok data, which Tiktok sells to anyone through brokers anyway, doesn't seem like an existential intelligence threat to our national security. Forcing TikTok to divest Chinese ownership would, at most, make Chinese intelligence go through an extra step and pay a little for the data.

If politicians were really worried about foreign adversaries aggregating comprehensive data profiles on everyone, just addressing China's access to TikTok is a side show distraction. Why didn't they pass legislation banning all major social media services from selling or sharing certain kinds of data and requiring the anonymization of other kinds of data to prevent anyone aggregating composite profiles across multiple social platforms or data brokers? That would actually reduce the threat profile somewhat.

Obviously, they aren't doing that because the FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, INS, IRS, Homeland Security and their Five Eyes international partners are aggressively buying data broker info on all US residents at massive scale every day and aggregating it into comprehensive profiles - all with no warrants, probable cause or oversight. The US Constitution doesn't apply because it's just private commercial data, not government data. Any such law would have to explicitly carve out exceptions allowing US and allied intelligence agencies to continue doing this. Alternatively, they could put such use under the secret FISA intelligence court. US intelligence has thoroughly co-opted FISA oversight but jumping through the FISA hoop is extra work and filling out the paperwork to be rubber-stamped is annoying. They much prefer remaining completely unregulated and unsupervised like they are now, collecting everything on everyone all the time without limit. They've certainly already automated collecting all the data they want from every broker.

So yeah... let's very publicly make a big show of slapping just China and only about TikTok - and loudly proclaim we really did something to protect citizen privacy and reduce our national data aggregation attack surface. This is the intelligence community cleverly offering a fig leaf of plausible deniability to politicians who can now claim they "did something", while leaving the US intelligence community free to pillage every last shred of citizen privacy in secret.

Not just about data harvesting though.

But what is the point of all this data? People don’t live forever or have unlimited exploitable LTV, so there is a very narrow window of time for where this data is useful for a given population. Is the goal to just use it to influence elections?

[dead]

It’s this - anyone saying otherwise simply does not know, or is pushing some kind of an agenda. I fully believe some people in the US government buy the whole “security” angle, but it’s very obviously bogus. So is the idea of selling it - china is very protective of chinese user data, there’s no way they are going to trust an american investor to play by their rules, even if a serious price was offered, which it hasn’t been. this entire thing feels like theater, honestly.

There's some defending it in general, but it's also just a really tough precedent to allow when it could, so easily, be used to shut down any other service they want by just waving the magic "national security" flag.

It's possible to believe TikTok is bad and that the pathway the US just proved out to banning it in the US has shown that no US court will seriously question the "security reasons" fig leaf. Telegram and Signal are both used by plenty of people the US could easily paint as "security threats" and it's unclear there's any defense to a ban that they could mount at this point.

It's completely irrelevant whether they have done it or not. The only thing that matters is the fact that they can do it.

We're not going let you have nukes just because you haven't nuked anybody yet.

Yeah i shared with relatives by taking a screenshot of a tiktok to show them the news

There is no evidence. This is just blind speculation. 95% of the population just doesn't care about telecom cybersecurity.

Those teens in Omaha will eventually become voting adults in Omaha and then will eventually come into positions of leadership in both the public and private sector. I can guarantee that 0% would appreciate being blackmailed or unknowingly used as pawns in spycraft. Teens in Omaha may not understand the full scope of what it means.

Oh we care. I care way, way less about an American company with my data over the CCP.

This is like saying that you don't care about free speech because you don't have anything to say right now. It's no where close to being a justification.

Yes

There is no legal way to ban FB -- nor would there be any way to ban TT if it were not owned and controlled by a foreign power.

All of your points except 1. are true of American social media companies. 2., in particular, is widely documented: the Facebook mood manipulation fiasco, Cambridge Analytica, Musk's personal tweaking of the Twitter trending hashtags, and YouTube's heavy-handed censorship of legitimate medical advice during Covid are just a few of the higher profile instances of this.

> If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large.

There is no wall. The Trump "tax cuts" raised taxes on most Americans and cut them for the 1%. Trump has not faced any consequences for betrayal in the past, why would he now?

In fact, TikTok helps promote the lack of awareness of all the above. If anything he'll want to keep it in place, to keep the public misinformed.

Try posting a Winnie the Pooh meme on RedNote.

Sure, but why can't my teenager smoke cigarettes?

The point of my response is: sometimes you have to be paternalistic, and the federal government doesn't need to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it because those people don't matter. They meaningfully defended the ban to the courts.

Your argument sounds like it's straight out of a CCP playbook.

I'm tempted to say: what's the point if you've preemptively disregarded it as made up "American propaganda."

But here you go anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon

https://archive.ph/20241007181947/https://www.wsj.com/politi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/china-hack-tr...

I'm not sure about "all our major telco's, but there is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora

> On January 12, 2010, Google revealed on its weblog that it had been the victim of a cyber attack. The company said the attack occurred in mid-December and originated from China. Google stated that more than 20 other companies had been attacked; other sources have since cited that more than 34 organizations were targeted.

Yes, whether you understand it or not is a different question.

Search for Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon.

Do you have links to the Human Rights Watch reporting that you reference?

I agree, you should be able to install whatever the fuck you want.

Google and Apple shouldn't be helping China get you to do that, by hosting and advertising it in their app store though*. Oracle shouldn't be helping China spy on Americans by hosting their services.

This isn't a law against you installing things on your phone. You're still free to install whatever you want on your phone.

*And if there is a valid first amendment claim here, it would probably be Google and Apple claiming that they have the right to advertise and convey TikTok to their users, despite it being an espionage tool for a hostile foreign government. Oddly enough they didn't assert that claim or challenge the law.

I think a democratic nation is well within its rights to restrict its citizens access of certain systems.

There is no such thing as unlimited liberty, especially with regards to systems under control of hostile nations such as China and Russia. Would you be comfortable allowing mass release of unrestricted Hamas / ISIS, Russian propaganda content to North American teenagers? National security is a real thing and geopolitics always play a critical role in people's lives.

One could perhaps argue that we must educate our citizens better, however I think rather than being naive, it's better to implement realistic regulations (within _democratic_ means of course) to contain the threats.

> Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone.

Like every other right, your freedom ends where other peoples freedom begins. You can install whatever you'd like on your phone... unless it prevents others from exercising their rights. That's how we all get to stay free from the "might makes right" crowd.

Joining your phone to a botnet belonging to a hostile foreign power might very well prevent others from enjoying the very rights you're trying to preserve.

You have a point about avoiding the slippery slope though. I do hope that the deciders are taking that risk seriously.

Websites and books are already being banned in the US. Ask anyone who can no longer access PornHub or who has seen books being removed from libraries.

But it's not about what you install, or even what you say. It's what you're told and shown. The US and China want control over that, for obvious reasons.

Meta has been 'curating' - censoring - content for years. TikTok is no different. X isn't even trying to pretend any more.

The cultural noise, cat videos, and 'free' debate - such as they are - are wrappers for political payloads designed to influence your beliefs, your opinions, and your behaviours, not just while consuming, but while voting.

If TikTok turned out to be State sponsored spyware, would you reconsider?

I support your slippery slope argument. I wonder where your red line is relative to "state sponsored spyware" and "typical advertising ID tracking" or "cool new app from company influenced by an adversarial super power".

You can still install the app on your phone. Tik Tok just can't do business in the US any more.