Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 426 posts

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

#71

Post by orbz »

nova22033 wrote: post #64
Kadin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differ…

The Chinese government, like the US government or any other large national government, is not monolithic. In what meaningful way does one part of the Chinese government differ from another part of the Chinese government? Isn't Xi basically the supreme leader for life now?

Even assuming he is the supreme leader, he can’t be everywhere, know everything and oversee all aspects of the regime.

Every sufficiently large organization, such as a government, has delegated areas of responsibility to various sub organizations. Those scopes will have varying overlap with other sub organizations, where it will result in political battles. It is more like competing microservices than monolith.

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

#72

Post by pydry »

aardvarkr wrote: post #25
pydry wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Hosting with oracle doesn’t change a thing

So when the US government made a song and dance 18 months ago about why it was absolutely critical that it be done to protect against exactly this threat you think they were lying or staggeringly incompetent?

And this time they're totally not?

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

#73

Post by xtian »

partiallypro wrote: post #63
xtian wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China had secret police stations in the US trying to capture Chinese dissidents What's the evidence for this?

The recent busts in multiple countries, including one prominent one in New York City? https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-police-s... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415 https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-c... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65537553.amp https://www.newsweek.com/china-overseas-police-service-cente... https://www.theguardian.com/world/…

I know there are about a billion articles in Western media claiming this, but what's the actual evidence?

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

#74

Post by Zigurd »

partiallypro wrote: post #46
Zigurd wrote: post #28

Who uses TikTok for sensitive information? Government access to TikTok user data is of limited additional value compared to whatever TikTok sells to large advertisers and analytics partners.

When you couple this with the fact that China had secret police stations in the US trying to capture Chinese dissidents, you could use such data to track those people to kidnap them, regardless of if the information was sensitive on the app or not.

This is like saying "When you couple 30 seconds of girls dancing with assault rifles, it could kill you."

China policing emigres in the US is way out of bounds and I dare you to find anyone who thinks otherwise. Whereas posting on any social media and expecting that post to not be seen by foreign adversaries is... what?

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

#75

Post by bequanna »

sneak wrote: post #66
bostonsre wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all our faults, we're not the ccp. Bashing America doesn't undo the horrors committed by the ccp. We're talking about an authoritarian regime that is currently committing genocide. Should we really just roll over and give them unfettered access to our markets while they are incredibly hostile to our companies and where we only get access by giving away ip?

The US imprisons its ethnic minorities in inhumane camps that frequently result in death at a rate 17x that of China, per capita. The countries are way more alike than you think. Calling for more state censorship in the US brings them even more into alignment.

Do you actually believe this?

It sounds like you are consuming far too much anti-American and pro-Chinese propaganda.

The Chinese succeeding in their geopolitical goals is the suppression of the individual at scale. Extinguishing of the light.

Collectivism looks good on paper but ultimately is high minded and has fatal flaws which resulted in horrible outcomes whenever tried. 100 million+ dead in the 20th century.

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

#76

Post by Kadin »

1101010010 wrote: post #56
jsdeveloper wrote: post #47

Will you install a secuirty camera in your daughters room, specifically when the the camera comes from country with most leaked cam footage!(where various reports argue that State is involved in such leaks)

Are there even IP cameras manufactured domestically to even choose? I have some inside my home (pointed at exterior doors; not inside bedrooms which seems borderline creepy and/or sadistic), but they're not connected to public networks and thus I don't consider them a risk.

Not at consumer price levels, no.

There are companies that make security hardware here in the US, but the market is mostly very high-end government and military customers. And TBH mostly they are still using Chinese components, just assembling stuff here in the US and marking the price up enough that they can justify calling it 'made in USA' by virtue of the value-add. Sometimes the software is coded or at least audited, though.

You can avoid the worst Chinese-made hardware if you look for "NDAA compliant" rather than US domestic manufacture. NDAA compliance means that a product isn't made by a number of prohibited Chinese suppliers who are known to be very thoroughly compromised (as opposed to the average level of compromise that you should assume most companies in China have... but China is a big place, so that difference isn't nothing).

Axis and Bosch both have NDAA-compliant product lines.

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

#77

Post by fuzzfactor »

Lucasoato wrote: post #7

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…

Didn't that seem to be the purpose of tiktok to begin with?

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

#78

Post by Zigurd »

penjelly wrote: post #65
Zigurd wrote: post #28

Who uses TikTok for sensitive information? Government access to TikTok user data is of limited additional value compared to whatever TikTok sells to large advertisers and analytics partners.

us military uses tiktok for fun from what ive seen. https://www.tiktok.com/search?q=military&t=1683997954279 i know these probably just look like "fun videos" and most are likely of no consequence, but my guess is some of the military footage submitted on there is recent and potentially not in the interest of US national defense.

That's what goes into an honest appraisal of an attack surface: What's the value of gaining that data?

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

#79

Post by maerF0x0 »

crmd wrote: post #57
aardvarkr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that a state actor would seek to flip a foreign National to their cause. You can do so with either a carrot or a stick or both. The carrot can be fancy dinners, free vacations, or access to what they want. The carrot can be threat of exposure of deep secrets, etc. Now imagine that there is an app that has the AMAZING ability to figure out EXACTLY what you like and don’t like. You haven’t used TikTok yourself…

And the 66% of US teens on TikTok are 66% of the next generation of US senators, presidents, cabinet members, military chiefs, etc. Imagine the competitive advantage of having a deep psychological profile for each of these personas of your geopolitical adversary.

And remember that political games do not have to be won in a generation, simply knowing the direction your opponent is going and bending them towards your preference is sufficient to be worthwhile.

Simply over subscribe the generations on antiwork and the cons (as opposed to pros) of (Democracy, America, Freedom, Modern thought, etc. whatever are the targets) and you can bend a generational trend.

Humans aren't particularly good at seeing evidence and realizing they're only seeing part of the whole picture.

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

#80

Post by mint2 »

grugagag wrote: post #19

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…

The ccp pays visits to relatives who still reside in China - and sometimes those abroad - for behaviors of people who’ve emigrated out of China. Tiktok gives them easy insight on whose relatives need a visit.

Second, it’s easy to find secrets on important people or politicians through their online habits - it’s pretty easy to see how that can be used for influence.

Post reply on HN