No More TikTok On House of Representatives' Smartphones 78
TikTok will no longer be allowed on any device managed by the US House of Representatives. Ars Technica reports: On Tuesday, the House's Chief Administrative Office announced the ban of the popular video-sharing app, a move that comes just a week after legislation that would bar TikTok from all federal devices was introduced. Congresspersons and their staffers will not be able to download the app on managed devices, the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity said in an email seen by Reuters. The mobile app is a "high risk to users due to a number of security risks," the email said. "If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it," the email continued.
Potential federal bans aside, TikTok is already at least partially banned from government-owned devices in 19 states. And the federal omnibus spending bill passed last week will put the kibosh on TikTok when it comes to all federally managed smartphones and devices.
Potential federal bans aside, TikTok is already at least partially banned from government-owned devices in 19 states. And the federal omnibus spending bill passed last week will put the kibosh on TikTok when it comes to all federally managed smartphones and devices.
Come on BeauHD. Apply yourself. (Score:3)
Checking for duplicates isn't that difficult. Especially since the first post about it was only 4 days ago:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Re:Come on BeauHD. Apply yourself. (Score:4, Informative)
Checking for duplicates isn't that difficult
Neither is reading the summary, let alone TFA. But hey, who am I to buck against Slashdot tradition?
In fairness, I totally thought it was a dupe at first as well. But technically, it's actually two posts with slightly different angles about an ongoing story.
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Checking for duplicates isn't that difficult
Neither is reading the summary, let alone TFA. But hey, who am I to buck against Slashdot tradition?
/quote> Who has time for all of that when shit posting is involved.
Re:"no more"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Some reps used TikTok for their campaign activities.
Re:"no more"? (Score:5, Informative)
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And? It's very common for people to use their personal phone for government activities. It's common in corporate circles as well. It's a bad idea, but people get sloppy. Then they act all surprised to find out that they signed paperwork when they hired on to be a middle manager saying that if they don't take a separate phone provided to them by the corp for business activities, that their personal phone is subject to search.
Anyway, a good campaign is using separate equipment for those activities, and wil
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Why allow any non-job-related apps on work devices (Score:3)
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Same reason why any other employees with company issued phones are allowed to have non-work related apps.
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Probably because the Nokia 3310 was discontinued in 2005 and was never upgraded past 3G, which is in the process of being eliminated so that customers have to upgrade.
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why don't they give them a Nokia 3310
This also has been tried and did not bring good results. Because Perfect is the enemy of good. In the 2000s and 2010s, France issued a military-grade encrypted phones to high officials (Teorem phone from Thales, see https://www.thalesgroup.com/en... [thalesgroup.com] ). It's the "perfect" solution: total control over the silicon, no software trackers, and in principle enemies don't have a copy so they can't look for vulnerabilities.
However, it was too perfect, as it is a clamshell phone with no apps. What happened I think is
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So...absolutely no good reason whatsoever.
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Indeed, it's not like humans are individuals with individual needs. Standard everything for everyone, in accordance to what government prescribes.
Remind me, why did USSR fail again?
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And this wouldn't interfere with the purpose of those tax dollar paid devices?
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Have you ever considered what the purpose of those taxpayer funded devices is?
Because there's a reason why taxpayers do not in fact want public servants to use private communications devices. Or are you just desperately riding the "Hillary didn't do nuffin'" bandwagon to its obvious and utterly insane conclusion?
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Soooo its because their IT department is incompetent with their MDM policies? I don't buy that, the USGOV takes marching orders from DOD. But then again, Hillary was allowed to run a private email server for the state department even when DOD policy threatened jail time to any peon who attempted to do the same
(this is not red vs blue, this is about government officials not following their own guidelines)
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She wasn't exactly "allowed to", it's just that there was (is?) very lax enforcement. But when ones talking about government supplied and managed equipment, the control should be a lot easier.
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Soooo its because their IT department is incompetent with their MDM policies? I don't buy that, the USGOV takes marching orders from DOD. But then again, Hillary was allowed to run a private email server for the state department even when DOD policy threatened jail time to any peon who attempted to do the same
(this is not red vs blue, this is about government officials not following their own guidelines)
To be fair, she wasnt hosting hillary@dodcontrolledaddress.gov. in her bathroom. She was hosting a private email address and then stopped using her official .gov address for correspondence to intentionally bypass govt oversight. (I believe she later claimed she was too stupid to understand what she was doing and it was an accident)
If you or I did that as peons, we'd be behind bars right now. But she and others (on both sides of the aisle) are special and above the law.
Intentionally bypass safeguards and pas
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The interesting part about people who do not understand security is that they see security as a binary of "secure - not secure".
Whereas people who have even a modicum of experience in the field know that security is merely a part of the process. And the moment it gets to onerous for the process itself, it gets severely compromised.
This is why private and public employers that provide devices for work such as phones and PCs almost universally allow users to install their software on them, and use them for no
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re: most Congressmen have official social media (Score:2)
And THIS is a huge problem in and of itself!
There have been numerous problems/scandals with foreign entities setting up fake branches of political parties to spread propaganda over social media, and it's confused and tricked a large number of people into thinking it's legitimate content.
If you so much as want to send out a postcard trying to get people to vote for you, there are a number of legal requirements involved. The entity paying for the mailing has to be stated on the postcard, etc. But with social
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As for them using it in their official capacity, you're basically "old man yells at clouds" here. Like it or not, that is how a lot of people communicate these days, and there is no reason to prevent elected reps from using it to com
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I understand what you're saying. But the decision to allow politicians to go onto social media in an "official capacity" is a mistake, IMO. It may not be one they're willing to make right -- but it's a bad idea nonetheless. Unless/until it changes, it's essentially a misuse of the communications platforms they're doing it on.
It makes it FAR too easy for people to fraudulently misrepresent them, and it just creates "voter fatigue" when you can't escape all of the political messages, even when you're just tr
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Wanna bet? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wanna bet? (Score:4, Informative)
I bet there will be some grandstanding idiots in Congress who'll flaunt TikTok. I'm thinking of one attention whoring dumb bitch in particular.
Considering what TikTok does, it would be like an admission of conspiracy to destroy the US. So yeah.
The number of things that TikTok does is way outside what a video sharing app should be doing. https://www.cisecurity.org/ins... [cisecurity.org]
Geolocation is one, biometrics is another. Use TikTok, and you are giving away the keys to the kingdom.
Is this a problem? Could be. Imagine if the Jan 6th "tourists" had Mike Pence's location shared with them Is the Chinese Guvmint getting this stuff?
Sigh... Presumably no direct evidence. But it beggars belief that it would be collected, but not used.
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That isn't to say any social media platform is trustworthy (e.g. all the Cambridge Analytica BS) but from a US perspective, they have jurisdiction of their operations whereas no such thing applies to TikTok.
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I bet there will be some grandstanding idiots in Congress who'll flaunt TikTok. I'm thinking of one attention whoring dumb bitch in particular.
Just one? Margorie Taylor-Green, Ted "Cancun" Cruz, Greg Abbott and Ron Desantis immediately came to mind with that description.
Why allow any non approved/whitelisted software? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is any government managed equipment allow for the user to just install software on? That should have been step 0. Step 1 is a listing of what can and cannot be on the device and Step 2 being auditing to verify compliance.
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Step 3: complain that no one uses government managed phones.
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Make it a rule or law they have to. If they don't, no paycheck or jail time.
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Why not just shoot people for not obeying your completely perfect security instructions? How hard is it to not use your phone for anything other than you intend to you use?
What do they think they are, individuals with needs you couldn't predict in your perfect hypothetical model?
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Can you imagine what life would be like if you wound up with a prick like that for a boss? "Here's an extra phone. Carry it with you 24-7. If you use it even for a 911 call, we'll pack you off to jail. And you'd better pick up by the third ring whenever we call, or we'll dock your pay."
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Its the government so doesn't count, but I know a lot of companies who do not register the phone to your address but to the business. This means you do not have E911 support and can waste valuable time confirming your address in an emergency. Moral: you should really use your own phone or a landline to call 911
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Excellent point. I can see somebody panicking, or not having their own cell phone handy in an emergency, though.
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Why not just shoot people for not obeying your completely perfect security instructions? How hard is it to not use your phone for anything other than you intend to you use?
What do they think they are, individuals with needs you couldn't predict in your perfect hypothetical model?
You're right. What will happen is that people will get a second phone, and the gvt issued one will stay in the pocket, or not even leave home.
The idea is to be helpful and take care of known risks, not to be so onerous and draconian that people don't use them at all.
Given what TikTok collects, it makes perfect sense to ban it. Why a video sharing app needs your biometrics, like Iris scans and all the other shit it collects and stores is letting us know they are doing something with them.
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You mean same behavioral collection shit that Meta, Google, Apple et al do?
I wonder, why could they be collecting it indeed.
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You mean same behavioral collection shit that Meta, Google, Apple et al do?
I wonder, why could they be collecting it indeed.
I didn't know that those people you claim are doing the same thing - you have the citations that Google and Facebook are collecting Iris scans, fingerprints and people's locations via GPS?
Cites would be great - I'll turn them into the proper people. Other software that tracks exact locations are banned from sensitive facilities. If they do these, they'll be gone quickly.
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Have you considered visiting your privacy settings of your google account?
Because it literally has a part called "location history" which you can turn off. Which google totally doesn't track, so it actually does nothing I'm sure. And I'm sure they totally don't track it for their intelligence overlords to ingest anyway.
Btw, have you heard about this guy called Snowden?
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You seem to have serious copy paste problems, with that line missing several words.
An honest mistake I'm sure.
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Fun part: wouldn't work in US. They have a very specific model of governance and legislation where everyone is a criminal if you actually start throwing a book at people. But there are so many books, that no one knows even the most things that are against laws and regulations, and many of the laws and regulations are absurd by design.
Which is fixed by unpunished common sense non-compliance. Which sometimes leads to malicious noncompliance and genuine criminality that gets passed over, like Hillary's mail se
All social media is a security risk. (Score:2, Interesting)
Why discriminate? Just ban all of them. I wouldn't want facebook, google, or twitter, etc. being able to potentially read secure messages, or constantly track either.
Re:Hypocrisy is now a Good Thing. (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't banning it, it's saying you can't use it on government equipment. A *very* different thing, and one that the government has a perfect right to do. It may even have an obligation to ban it, but I haven't been interested enough in TikTok to check. (Some folks report it's doing a lot of info collection. Not something you would want even near any place sensitive information is being discussed. Of course, the same is true of Alexa and similar things.)
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Nothing you have said here changes a damn thing about the risks of this app two years ago vs. today.
That same government equipment and user base was ripe for the plucking back then as it was last week. That same government held the same obligation of protecting government workers and data in 2020 as it does in 2022.
Only difference is the decision aligns with the approved narrative now. It didn't before. Don't bother asking why.
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Two years ago when an American leader tried to ban this exact app, he was labeled a xenophobic racist by the same people who are supporting a ban now.
He banned TikTok because people were using it to fuck with his covid rallies.
Shame I want more ways to occupy their time (Score:4, Insightful)
The more time they waste on pointless stupidity the less time they have to inflict it on the rest of us.
Now that it's been banned, it's now banned? (Score:2)
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It was already banned by the legislation. Why did someone need to ban it a second time?
Laws passed by Congress are enforced by the executive branch, but the executive branch has no authority over Congress. So most laws passed by Congress don't apply to Congress.
So if Congress wants to enforce the same restriction on itself, it needs a separate rule.
For instance, minimum wage laws and OSHA safety regulations didn't apply to Congress staffers for many years.
Political Theater (Score:1)
Not a problem (Score:2)
Not a problem. They can follow their favorite TikTok influencers on Twitter in the LibsofTikTok account.