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TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

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Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#21

I would be extremely surprised if a state-actor like China couldn’t access most US company data at will. If you can invest several billions and have thousands of people working to create a breach, no company is safe, not even AWS or Microsoft. In this case, that’s even way easier, the company is Chinese, the CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something unexpected? I’m much more concerned by the laziness of mo…

The Chinese government, like the US government or any other large national government, is not monolithic.

Having information available for easy perusal via a commercial channel (which is potentially not even illegal) is very different from having information accessible via use of national-asset intelligence capabilities. Information which can only be obtained the second way is almost certainly going to receive different treatment than the first.

There is value in making information more difficult (and more illegal, and less socially and politically acceptable) to access, even if that control is not 100% effective or if there are still ways of getting around it.

Increasing the friction involved in accessing personal information is an imperfect win, but a win nonetheless.

For most users of commercial software, your system is penetrable and should be considered insecure against a nation-state level attacker willing to spend a 0-day on getting in. But that doesn't mean you should just leave everything hanging out in the open where any doofus can get to it, or voluntarily hand your information over to an unfriendly government's partner corporation. At least make them work for it.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#22

Im more curious what tiktok data amouts to and how it could be used by CCP. I’ve heard of bans of Tiktok use by politicians and army bases and such. Without sensitive location data to some specific users but solely the young sharing memes, I wounder how CCP could use that data… Not a Tiktok user myself, if anyone could illuminate me on this it’s be great. For example does tiktok have direct messages from users to use…

It is a kompromat generator to blackmail the next Teixeira.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#23
post #15

I would be extremely surprised if a state-actor like China couldn’t access most US company data at will. If you can invest several billions and have thousands of people working to create a breach, no company is safe, not even AWS or Microsoft. In this case, that’s even way easier, the company is Chinese, the CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something unexpected? I’m much more concerned by the laziness of mo…

I would have been unsurprised if the US government hadn't already forced them to host with Oracle a year or two ago supposedly to prevent exactly this from happening. Is Larry Ellison a Chinese spy? He would probably have to either be complicit or criminally negligent to allow this to happen given he was given the contract precisely for this reason. I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about American chi…

> I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about American chips being hacked

Unless there is hard proof of anything I always assume news like these is the usual suspects warmongering.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#24

I would be extremely surprised if a state-actor like China couldn’t access most US company data at will. If you can invest several billions and have thousands of people working to create a breach, no company is safe, not even AWS or Microsoft. In this case, that’s even way easier, the company is Chinese, the CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something unexpected? I’m much more concerned by the laziness of mo…

Imagine the worms put on phones of employees of various tech companies - specifically datacenter employees in various commerical and government agencies - recall the STRAVA scandal which revealed secret military bases...

The TikTok angle is like stuxnet for that type of corporate/gov espionage....

Its ludicris how poorly the USG has handled this.

But then again, you have so many people in congress with dual citizenship (which should be illegal and a capital crime IMO)

but then look at the spouses of lawmakers, their investments, their citizenship, their network ranking over the time their spouce was in congress, and their kids...

FFS we are still arguing over Biden's ties to money laundering in Ukraine and China, but we dont talk about the GOAT of grifters ; Mitch McConnell?

the CCP has more backdoors into the USG than they do with just TikTok ... and lets not even talk about Israel's backdoors which are actually a front-door-fire-hose.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#25
post #15

I would be extremely surprised if a state-actor like China couldn’t access most US company data at will. If you can invest several billions and have thousands of people working to create a breach, no company is safe, not even AWS or Microsoft. In this case, that’s even way easier, the company is Chinese, the CCP can have this access lawfully, is this something unexpected? I’m much more concerned by the laziness of mo…

I would have been unsurprised if the US government hadn't already forced them to host with Oracle a year or two ago supposedly to prevent exactly this from happening. Is Larry Ellison a Chinese spy? He would probably have to either be complicit or criminally negligent to allow this to happen given he was given the contract precisely for this reason. I'm also reminded of that fake story from the WSJ about American chi…

Hosting with oracle doesn’t change a thing. Just because the data would be on US servers don’t stop the data from being accessible from outside of the region.

And is it really that hard to imagine a world where a hostile and ambitious nation would seek to leverage a technology platform to listen to sensitive conversations? The US has done it in the past and you better believe China will be doing it too.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#26

Im more curious what tiktok data amouts to and how it could be used by CCP. I’ve heard of bans of Tiktok use by politicians and army bases and such. Without sensitive location data to some specific users but solely the young sharing memes, I wounder how CCP could use that data… Not a Tiktok user myself, if anyone could illuminate me on this it’s be great. For example does tiktok have direct messages from users to use…

in my rudimentary understanding, the knowledge would be useful more in an aggregate nature. finding effective ways to target include/exclude propaganda and gathering real-time data around memes/info sharing topics that relate to whatever information campaigns they are currently running. lies seem to spread faster than the truth, and very few places are as actively in use as tiktok.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#27
post #3

I'm starting to become fatigued by all this TikTok news. Either ban the app or don't. Causing anxiety over TikTok without any action is the worst of both worlds.

> I'm starting to become fatigued

> Causing anxiety

The news is literally designed to do that to you. Stop consuming so much of it for your own mental well-being, and that of everyone else you interact with.

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