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The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

democrats.senate.gov

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Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#81

Post by zkid18 »

rauchp wrote: post #5

Looks like the FBI designated FaceApp as a threat because of its crazy data policy and its Russian origin. Even though I think it's a really shady app, that's a pretty low bar.

I think FaceApp should be hosted on an AWS-like infrastructure.

Hosting in Russia is expensive and does not provide any advantages, such as dynamic routing that is crucial for world-wide app. Most developers use it to comply with Russian standards: you only need to store information about Russian users on Russian servers. In addition, currently in Russia there are no good alternatives for reliable cloud neural network inference.

But I can’t understand the negative media about the application, based on the founder’s country of origin. I argue that this is discrimination because there is as yet no evidence of breach of confidentiality.

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#82

Post by godelski »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #65
godelski wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat model is that this photo is shared with the Russian government and then the Russian government can match American citizens (or potentially people working in intelligence), and then using that in facial recognition programs. I.e. they can differentiate Americans (insert x country) from their own citizens and know who to watch more carefully. This is a legitimate threat model. I'm not sure why you think it w…

I am not a spy, but I imagine they have some sort of internal guidelines around uploading face pics and PII to random apps/websites

If you work for the government in any way they generally don't want you spreading around PII. Number one concern is that you can be blackmailed. So of course, the lower your informational footprint is the lower the threat model.

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#83

Post by knzhou »

adrr wrote: post #58
jjn2009 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like that information is already largely public just not linked publicly to your phone information.

Is there a public database of images of people with names? Police don’t even have that.

You mean the digital equivalent of a big book full of people's names and faces? That's an exact description of Facebook.

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#84

Post by LilBytes »

walrus01 wrote: post #29
tehlike wrote: post #9

Plenty of chinese apps under "utility" category is flooding the us consumers...

Notably ES File Explorer was recently removed form the Google play store because of suspicious behavior. One of the most popular Android file managers.

Alleged click fraud:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ES+File+Explorer+removed+from+play...

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#85

Post by mc32 »

trhway wrote: post #73
freehunter wrote: post #68

I know it's against the rules to tell people to read the article, but I would encourage everyone to read the article. It specifically says this is a potential threat to > "elected officials, candidates, political campaigns, [and] political parties" not to the general public. The potential threat is for someone at Candidate_1's campaign taking selfies with the app, that then uploads them to Russian servers where the R…

>The potential threat is for someone at Candidate_1's campaign taking selfies with the app, that then uploads them to Russian servers where the Russian government can see them and can also see what's in the background (sensitive documents?) good old days just less than 20 years ago back at Sun when we were strictly instructed that the computer monitors must be off when the photos would be taken. How times and basic n…

I remember when the Sony-DPRK thing happened there was a photo of Cybercommand and it showed a wall of monitors and people were examining the tools they had open on the monitors.

There was also a photo from the Iranian Nuclear agency and it had photos of their systems and software on their website or something and it was scraped for info prior to Stuxnet.

MacAfee let some "Wired" photog take a digital photo without ensuring geotagging was disabled or removed from the metadata when he was prancing over Belize as he was escaping some plot to frame him.

Those lapses happen.

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#86

Post by laughinghan »

trhway wrote: post #73
freehunter wrote: post #68

I know it's against the rules to tell people to read the article, but I would encourage everyone to read the article. It specifically says this is a potential threat to > "elected officials, candidates, political campaigns, [and] political parties" not to the general public. The potential threat is for someone at Candidate_1's campaign taking selfies with the app, that then uploads them to Russian servers where the R…

>The potential threat is for someone at Candidate_1's campaign taking selfies with the app, that then uploads them to Russian servers where the Russian government can see them and can also see what's in the background (sensitive documents?) good old days just less than 20 years ago back at Sun when we were strictly instructed that the computer monitors must be off when the photos would be taken. How times and basic n…

Is President Trump representative of modern opsec norms?

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#87

Post by winfred »

_jal wrote: post #72
freehunter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes all countries do it, but US intelligence doesn't just take into account the action , they take the actor as well. Australia is a friendly nation to the US and shares intelligence data with US intelligence agencies. What we see, they see and what they see, we see. Russia is not a friendly nation to the US and does not share intelligence with US intelligence agencies. The FBI isn't saying "normal people are at risk…

> saying "yeah but everyone does it" is about as off-topic of a remark as you can get I've seen this sort of "argument" a lot lately. Not sure why people think it communicates anything other than lazy cynicism. That everyone (to a rounding error) has sex does not mean that everyone has sex with everyone.

It's got an actual name: Whataboutism.

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

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#88

Post by JaRail »

EGreg wrote: post #63

I have seen countries around the world have such a response. Russia freaked out that the latest Windows phones home, USA freaked out about Kaspersky, and so on. Russia has set in motion projects to build homegrown Linux based operating systems etc. I consider all this a good thing. Why don’t we have the ability to restrict at the OS level which domains an app can send information to? Then we can finally host backend…

> Why don’t we have the ability to restrict at the OS level which domains an app can send information to?

Ads.

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#89

Post by EGreg »

JaRail wrote: post #88
EGreg wrote: post #63

I have seen countries around the world have such a response. Russia freaked out that the latest Windows phones home, USA freaked out about Kaspersky, and so on. Russia has set in motion projects to build homegrown Linux based operating systems etc. I consider all this a good thing. Why don’t we have the ability to restrict at the OS level which domains an app can send information to? Then we can finally host backend…

> Why don’t we have the ability to restrict at the OS level which domains an app can send information to? Ads.

But Apple is a honey badger - it dont care about ads. Their whole differentiator has become privacy and putting the user first vs apps! Seems like a glorious feature for them no? Safari already leads the way with blocking ads and third party tracking cookies.

Re: The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

#90

Post by freehunter »

zkid18 wrote: post #81
rauchp wrote: post #5

Looks like the FBI designated FaceApp as a threat because of its crazy data policy and its Russian origin. Even though I think it's a really shady app, that's a pretty low bar.

I think FaceApp should be hosted on an AWS-like infrastructure. Hosting in Russia is expensive and does not provide any advantages, such as dynamic routing that is crucial for world-wide app. Most developers use it to comply with Russian standards: you only need to store information about Russian users on Russian servers. In addition, currently in Russia there are no good alternatives for reliable cloud neural networ…

According to the article, FaceApp says they host in the United States, Singapore, Australia and Ireland. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. The problem the FBI has is no matter where the data is hosted, the Russian government has access to it as long as the Russian developers of FaceApp have access to it.
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