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The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

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Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#371

Post by cscurmudgeon »

conductr wrote: post #94
dahfizz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd, frankly. "The US government collects taxes on US citizens, why not let China collect taxes on US citizens? Its the same." "The US government throws US citizens in jail, why not let Chine throw US citizens in jail? Its the same." Yeah, it would be great if the Federal government turned down their surveillance. That doesn't make it okay for China to run psy-ops against us.

> That doesn't make it okay for China to run psy-ops against us Downloading and using TikTok is a personal choice and you’ve allowed it by doing so as an individual. I don’t think we should ban individual apps from other countries. If we want that, we need some larger more thoughtful policy. But to do so effectively, we essentially need to put up a firewall and ban the sharing of domestically collected data as well (…

> Downloading and using TikTok is a personal choice and you’ve allowed it by doing so as an individual.

Not if it interferes with security of the country.

The same personal choice argument is what folks use to justify other choices that are bad (refusing well test vaccines, not paying taxes, etc.)

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#372

Post by cscurmudgeon »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #141
sgu999 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking would be a good start... but TikTok also targets a very young and immature audience that is already protected from many other things by rules.

In public elementary school here in the US they literally taught me indoctrination everyday by doing cult like rituals and allegiance to a cloth and history that whitewashed the crimes. How are young people in America supposed to be taught to think freely when they are shunned for thinking outside of the American way?

Have you seen what happens in China *today*?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/30/chinese-communist-party...

Back to topic:

Applying critical thinking, you can be patriotic and a critical thinker.

You can love a country and still be a critical thinker. Just like you can love a person but be aware of their flaws.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#373

Post by shapefrog »

pjc50 wrote: post #56
darkteflon wrote: post #12

Utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the current geopolitical climate. China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops. Shut it down, yesterday. Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. China sure as shit doesn’t allow its citizens to cough up their personal information for algorithmi…

sigh can we not have targeted-by-nationality bans and instead have .. rules? If Tiktok the app is performing surveillance, ban surveillance by apps . All of them. Or make it technically impossible to escape its little sandbox, and let people have their entertainment.

Nahh US surveillance is the good kind /s

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#374

Post by conductr »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #371
conductr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't make it okay for China to run psy-ops against us Downloading and using TikTok is a personal choice and you’ve allowed it by doing so as an individual. I don’t think we should ban individual apps from other countries. If we want that, we need some larger more thoughtful policy. But to do so effectively, we essentially need to put up a firewall and ban the sharing of domestically collected data as well (…

> Downloading and using TikTok is a personal choice and you’ve allowed it by doing so as an individual. Not if it interferes with security of the country. The same personal choice argument is what folks use to justify other choices that are bad (refusing well test vaccines, not paying taxes, etc.)

I view it more like a vice (smoking, gambling, etc) and as mentioned we need an actual thoughtful policy if we think it’s a security issue.

Banning one app at a time is not the way.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#375

Post by texaslonghorn5 »

hoolabooladoola wrote: post #270
krolden wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the native Americans? Pretty sure that's still the largest scale, most drawn out genocide in the entire history of our species.

Lakota checking in to tell you that a basic reading of history would confirm that you’re pretty wrong. Please don’t what-about the Uyghurs to Native American history because it’s disrespectful both ways, and minimizes their suffering. For all the conflict with Europeans, our historical experiences with them, painful as they may have been and remain, were much more nuanced and complicated than what is happening in Chi…

despite not wanting to discount your lived experience, I am more inclined to believe settler colonialist theory (drawing on work from trained scholars, both indigenous and not) which suggest that European settlement did lead to what was in fact genocide.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#376

Post by unity1001 »

darkteflon wrote: post #12

Utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the current geopolitical climate. China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops. Shut it down, yesterday. Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. China sure as shit doesn’t allow its citizens to cough up their personal information for algorithmi…

> China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops.

CIA and its satellites have been doing that for decades, and on top of that it has a habit of kidnapping, jailing and torturing other countries' citizens. Even the episode of 'rendition flights' could totally delegitimize any complaint from the US, leave aside its cooperative satellites.

Projecting problems and criticism to outside, imagined or concocted enemies and veering the attention away from the plague inside their own society are things which prevent the Western public from addressing the enemy in their midst. That behavior pattern is why the West has been tumbling downhill for the last 40 years.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#377

Post by unity1001 »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #283
xwolfi wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And God knows China is collecting all that important juicy information on teenagers' love for the latest fad ... Man the FBI acts like tik tok is used in jet planes and nuclear power plants...

There are at least three worrisome things that data can be used for: 1. Shaping and manipulating minds. Eg, show healthy, educational, intellectual content to Chinese users, and unhealthy, addictive, emotional, short-attention-span-inducing content in US and foreign markets (already happening [1]). 2. Train AI for analyzing and further manipulating foreign publics, or for providing strategic insight into political an…

> 1. Shaping and manipulating minds. Eg, show healthy, educational, intellectual content to Chinese users, and unhealthy, addictive, emotional, short-attention-span-inducing content in US and foreign markets (already happening [1]).

That is happening, because the US audience is CHOOSING to interract with shtty content online. Actually, the majority of shtty content, from flat earth to Reagan being alive et al, come from the US.

> which may be used for pressure, coercion, or manipulation operations or similar

So Chinese government will coerce and pressure me to do what, exactly. Will it be any worse from the rendition flights of CIA.

...

This sounds like double standards.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#378

Post by unity1001 »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #297
rosmax_1337 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am worried that 1, 2 and 3 is already being used by the western governments to do the exact same thing against it's own population. The FBI is just jealous they didn't have the boot on Tiktok like they do with all other kinds of social media and websites.

I'm aware of that too, it's a problem, but the lesser one imho. At least there's some modicum of accountability with Western companies subject to Western laws, which Western citizens have some say in (if they get agitated enough at least), thus some possibility for reigning them in. There's much less or none with with Chinese companies operating in the West, and sending all the data they collect back to servers in Ch…

> I'm aware of that too, it's a problem, but the lesser one imho.

How the hell CIA rendition flights are a 'lesser problem'.

> Western companies subject to Western laws, which Western citizens have some say in

Western public has not been able to change neither the economic policy, nor forign policy, nor the surveillance state laws in the past 40 years. Also, the western laws are wantonly ignored in the west when western corporate or state interests are at stake. So no.

...

This is exceptionalism. You are applying to others the standards that you are not applying to your own side, where you have no means to do anything about the problem.

Its a coping mechanism that helps avoid cognitive dissonance by projecting 'worse' problems to outside, to external 'enemies'.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#379

Post by unity1001 »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #310
rosmax_1337 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in the US, I have no clear way at all to change how US government agencies deal with data gathered from citizens of my country. I can't even vote there, not that "voting blue/red" would change this mess at all. It can't be more than a week ago that we discussed here on HN a way that MS Powerpoint can leak your entire presentation to microsoft. Lots of people in my country use the entire MS suite, and I d…

It's not impossible for other countries to affect US internet companies. The EU GDPR is probably the best example. Once that went into effect, every website began showing popups enabling users to control cookie settings for that website, even within the US to US citizens not subject to GDPR. If there's a country or block of countries with large enough population relative to US, and where US companies operate, it can…

> The EU GDPR is probably the best example

And that's precisely why there is a trade war in between the US and Eu since early 2005. Because the Eu started making up its own rules and standards. TTIP, ACTA, PIPA were all attempts by the US to bring the Eu to heel. All failed. And voila - there is a proxy war that deprives the Eu out of cheap oil and gas, leading to literal deindustrialization of the Eu.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-09/european-...

Its not an argument for what you are proposing. Its an argument against it.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#380

Post by unity1001 »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #273
pjc50 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh can we not have targeted-by-nationality bans and instead have .. rules? If Tiktok the app is performing surveillance, ban surveillance by apps . All of them. Or make it technically impossible to escape its little sandbox, and let people have their entertainment.

We really should have some sort of reciprocity with China by now. Frame it however you want, don't mention China specifically in the bill, etc. But they are no longer a developing nation, they are the largest or second largest economy and military power in the world, and are advancing a set of totalitarian values completely antithetical to what the US and our democratic allies have been fighting for (literally and fi…

> and are advancing a set of totalitarian values completely antithetical to what the US

That should be why Julian Assange is in British Guantanamo. And also why CIA rendition flights happened. And why women and children are being blown to bits in drone bombings. And definitely why the Occupy Movement was stomped down in a nation-wide raid in 30 American cities organized by the FBI.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/no...

And as of this very moment, the people who lied about nonexistent Iraqi WMDs in order to invade Iraq and murder 1 million Iraqis, are giving lectures about 'spotting misinformation'.

Save the 'values' nonsense. They don't exist where you claim them to exist.

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