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FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

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Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#201

Post by GoblinSlayer »

moomoo11 wrote: post #42

Of course not. Every government is going to look out for themselves. Following your reasoning, look at China. They have their own playbook for operating within China, and it is quite restrictive. They make it harder for foreign entities to do business within China. From a geopolitical viewpoint this makes complete sense. You don't want your rival to have a backdoor into influencing/manipulating/discovering how people…

>As for me, I'm an American and it is in my best interests that USA stays top dog.

What do you mean by USA though? It's not a monolithic object and has plenty of rivals too. Also if USA is top dog, it may get freedom to do whatever it wants to you, be careful about what you want. When was the last time absolute power produced good results?

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#202

Post by cscurmudgeon »

Grimburger wrote: post #137
moomoo11 wrote: post #42

Of course not. Every government is going to look out for themselves. Following your reasoning, look at China. They have their own playbook for operating within China, and it is quite restrictive. They make it harder for foreign entities to do business within China. From a geopolitical viewpoint this makes complete sense. You don't want your rival to have a backdoor into influencing/manipulating/discovering how people…

> I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player Good for you, but try imagine hearing this from a Chinese national. "Whatever it needs" to do...

They have been hearing it for decades. They are more draconian in dealing with foreign entities.

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

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#203

Post by RektBoy »

moomoo11 wrote: post #160
Grimburger wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player Good for you, but try imagine hearing this from a Chinese national. "Whatever it needs" to do...

Its exactly in line with what I said. End of the day, we're all on teams whether or not you like it. And every single country on this planet has baggage. I have people in my family who are living who remember what it feels like to be considered sub-human by British imperialists as they allowed famines. On the grand scheme of things, if we add up the sins and good deeds, the USA has done more to improve the lives of p…

No post body was provided.

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#204

Post by pjc50 »

_8j50 wrote: post #58
snehk wrote: post #10

I don't have a horse in this race at all, but the annoying part is that the same rules don't get applied across the board. Everything they're accusing TikTok of - from data harvesting to the government having access to said data - is true for western companies as well and that should be the problem. Not the fact that the data is now in the hands of the Chinese but that the data is being collected at all provided to t…

American companies working against national security will be held accountable. A Chinese companh working against american national security will be celebrated at home instead.

> American companies working against national security will be held accountable

.. are you sure about that? The argument is often made that the First Amendment (and the second amendment!) provide Americans (and not foreign nationals or companies operating within America) with a constitutional right to work against American national security.

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#205

Post by peoplefromibiza »

moomoo11 wrote: post #190
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

We can nitpick til the end of time, and I agree with you on those points. Like I said in my comment, nobody is perfect. Hell my own people were used as slaves for the longest times and called "sub humans". We can do this for so many countries, I mean some of them literally murdered millions of people in camps (Germany, USSR, China), some of them were so corrupt their entire nations failed (Sri Lanka, African nations…

No post body was provided.

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#206

Post by cudgy »

jpk wrote: post #33

Lots of folks here arguing that the focus on TikTok is unfair, given the data collection practices of domestic corps like Facebook. From a privacy point of view, this argument is well-founded, but I think it's tangential to the argument TFA is making, which is: this data collection done by a foreign government and exploited for surveillance or espionage is a national security risk. I get it. We want corps to stop hoo…

Ok. Put a stop to TikTok and allow US companies to vacuum up our data. China then hacks those companies servers or installs agents within the companies and gets the data anyway. Security threat not avoided.

None of these companies should be allowed to store and abuse the sensitive information people divulge when using many of these services.

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#207

Post by paulv »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #89
paulv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That...seems completely reasonable to me.

Your typing cadence may be another bit of identifying personal info. Not to mention they could be lying or "not know" what their tech is really doing. Wouldn't be the first time.

They also have access to a lot of other metadata (IMEI, IP address, OS version, MAC address, email/phone number that you signed up with, etc) that they could combine with data from brokers to identify you as well.

I'm not saying that they should be collecting this data, to be clear, just that, from everything I've read, it doesn't seem like they are doing anything uniquely untoward. I'm hoping there's something I'm missing.

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#208

Post by makomk »

snehk wrote: post #22
blululu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there is a reason why China’s government bans all the American Social Media companies. If they could undermine the country’s sovereignty then it would be a significant difference.

They ban them because the companies don't want to follow the same rules Chinese companies have to follow. It's exactly what I'm asking for. Have one set of rules and apply them to everyone. Ban data harvesting completely. Ban it for Facebook, Google and everyone else and then kick out TikTok because they don't follow the rules.

One of the first, most important rules Chinese companies have to follow in order to access this Chinese market is "be a Chinese company". I'm not exaggerating here, and if I remember rightly this is even an actual official, stated rule controlling who can offer information services like TikTok in China (rather then one of the many unstated rules their government also uses to screw with Western companies) and includes restrictions on non-Chinese even buying shares in those companies.

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#209

Post by pastage »

soganess wrote: post #83
gambiting wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Everything they're accusing TikTok of - from data harvesting to the government having access to said data - is true for western companies as well and that should be the problem The thing is, yes Facebook and Google's data collection is horrendous, but TikTok it literally on another level. Quite a good explanation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/comment/fmuk...

From the link: * - Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc) - Other apps you have installed (I've even seen some I've deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?) - Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name) - Whether or not you're rooted/jailbroken - Some variants of the…

Interesting! Is this allowed in GDPR?

I would not think any of these points would be ok. You seem to argue that this is something "everyone does", that does not make it ok. I really thought we had gotten further in the privacy discussion.

Re: FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores

#210

Post by jpk »

cudgy wrote: post #206
jpk wrote: post #33

Lots of folks here arguing that the focus on TikTok is unfair, given the data collection practices of domestic corps like Facebook. From a privacy point of view, this argument is well-founded, but I think it's tangential to the argument TFA is making, which is: this data collection done by a foreign government and exploited for surveillance or espionage is a national security risk. I get it. We want corps to stop hoo…

Ok. Put a stop to TikTok and allow US companies to vacuum up our data. China then hacks those companies servers or installs agents within the companies and gets the data anyway. Security threat not avoided. None of these companies should be allowed to store and abuse the sensitive information people divulge when using many of these services.

Again, I agree, "We want corps to stop hoovering up our data because they can use it to manipulate us with advertising, and they can mishandle it such that _other bad actors can exploit it_."

My point is, if finding the political will required to stop TikTok is easier than it is to regulate data collection more generally, we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.

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