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FBI Chief Says TikTok 'Screams' of US National Security Concerns (reuters.com) 97

Posted by BeauHD from the information-war dept.
China's government could use TikTok to control data on millions of American users, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying the Chinese-owned video app "screams" of security concerns. Reuters reports: Wray told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats to U.S. security that the Chinese government could also use TikTok to control software on millions of devices and drive narratives to divide Americans over Taiwan or other issues. "Yes, and I would make the point on that last one, in particular, that we're not sure that we would see many of the outward signs of it happening if it was happening," Wray said of concerns China could feed misinformation to users. "This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government - and it, to me, it screams out with national security concerns," Wray said. Yesterday, the White House said it backed a bill in Congress to give the Biden administration new powers to ban TikTok and other foreign technologies that could pose security threats.
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FBI Chief Says TikTok 'Screams' of US National Security Concerns More

FBI Chief Says TikTok 'Screams' of US National Security Concerns

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  • ...just like anything from an American company is almost certainly a CIA tool (though often apparently utilized more effectively by the FSK).

    Social media should be treated like an agitprop outlet and guarded along national borders as such.

    • Re:Of course it TikTok is a CCP tool (Score:5, Insightful)

      by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @08:27PM (#63354853)

      ...just like anything from an American company is almost certainly a CIA tool (though often apparently utilized more effectively by the FSK).

      Social media should be treated like an agitprop outlet and guarded along national borders as such.

      I disagree. TikTok and other companies, US or Chinese may or may not have direct control from their respective governments. The big difference is that when the Chinese government calls on Chinese companies, there is no choice. Well, there is a choice, but saying no is not conducive to the pursuit of happiness. American companies may face similar pressures from the US government. There is a choice for American companies because the American judiciary is unpredictable and not always favorable to specific government agencies and programs. Furthermore, the US has an independent press and a wildly free internet.

      The Chinese government can be direct in telling their companies what to do, but the US government has to consider the courts and the press. Imagine Iran Contra, Guantanamo, Prism being discussed in China. Now imagine Edward Snowden in China. Do US companies aid the CIA, NSA, etc.? Absolutely. Are there US companies that push back? I don't know. It's possible in the US but impossible in China.

    • I'm sure you have fun saying that. But no, different things are actually different.
      China is run by the Chinese Communist Party. The law in China is all businesses of any kind must assist whenever requested by government or party officials. That's the law. Remember, on paper it's communist - the businesses are nominally instruments of "the public" via the government officials.

      "Get a warrant" isn't a thing in China. That's the United States. Fourth amendment and all that - you may have heard of it.

      The US gov

  • Meanwhile, a few stories down (Score:3)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @06:55PM (#63354669) Homepage

    Google wants you to route all your web traffic through their VPN. But don't worry, it's okay because they're not Chinese.

  • how to avoid shit (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @07:03PM (#63354683)

    If you know that the dog shits in the grass, then you know that you can avoid stepping in shit if you avoid the grass. This applies to all social media, not just TikTok. Better to make something socially unacceptable rather than banning it.

    Where I live it has become uncool to smoke cigarettes, almost no one smokes anymore. That didn't take a ban, though I'm sure heavy taxes played a role. When are we going to figure out that social media is toxic and uncool?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When are we going to figure out that social media is toxic and uncool?

      posted on social media

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        When are we going to figure out that social media is toxic and uncool?

        posted on social media

        Wait, did someone think slashdot was cool or non-toxic? I thought it was merely modestly useful, which is quite different from the two preceding characteristics.

        • Wait, did someone think slashdot was cool or non-toxic?

          This is one of those stories where Slashdot's demographic make up really shows. Nobody is commenting on how they enjoy TikTok or how they're on there constantly uploading their Tiks? Toks? Short format videos? *shugs* It's all just armchair pontificating over whether or not a ban is justified, with the obligatory parent or two chiming in about how they feel about their kids using it. Meanwhile, over on Reddit, there's people saying it's bullshit because they actually use TikTok. They're probably teen

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      If you know that the dog shits in the grass, then you know that you can avoid stepping in shit if you avoid the grass.

      Until the government bans grass. Then the dog will shit on the sidewalk.

    • If you know that the dog shits in the grass, then you know that you can avoid stepping in shit if you avoid the grass.

      This actually works as a Zen koan. [imgur.com]

  • I don't use TikTok and only oppose a ban because deplatforming 113.3 million American users really doesn't sit well with me from a free speech angle. As it is, the American "big tech" companies have too much influence over speech in this country, and less competition ultimately never ends up being a good thing.

    I have no idea if it's related to the whole escalating tensions with China, but a few days ago my Tuya home automation setup stopped triggering on the sunrise/sunset events.
    *grabs coffee mug and in m

    • deplatforming 113.3 million American users really doesn't sit well with me from a free speech angle.

      Why should the number of users matter?

      Would it be more acceptable to you if a small minority were targeted?

      • Why should the number of users matter?

        Because that's a lot of potentially pissed off voters. The average user isn't going to care about some nebulous China spying fears, they're just going to know their cat videos went away because some politicians threw a tizzy. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say the present administration will be blamed. Because I fully expect Republicans (even though the effort was ostensibly bi-partisan) to stick the proverbial Joe Biden "I did that" sticker on it.

    • > deplatforming 113.3 million American users really
      > doesn't sit well with me from a free speech angle

      Meh... They could simply just go back to pretending to be K-Pop dancers on YouTube. There'd be no change to anyone's speech, and even the self-obsessed narcissism would be unchanged. They'd just have to get used to filming in landscape again instead of portrait.

      • They could simply just go back to pretending to be K-Pop dancers on YouTube.

        Except that YouTube's algorithms are garbage. Every time I go on there I get tons of crazy right-wing conspiracy shit in my recommended feed, all because I sometimes watch firearms demonstration videos. One platform is not necessarily equivalent to another, just ask the former president what happened to all his Twitter followers.

    • deplatforming 113.3 million American users

      That isn't the issue...

      the American "big tech" companies have too much influence

      There... THAT is the issue.
      TikTok has and does nothing that Google, Meta, Twitter, and Microsoft already do. All of them have, at some point or other, been weaponized by the United States government and the security establishment. They all feed five eyes.

      And that is the real reason. The USA doesn't want anything they can't get their greasy mitts into. It's not that TikTok has done anything anyone else hasn't done. They just aren't under the NSA's thumb.

      The NSA has back doors into

      • Huawei 5G code's like a sieve (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        ... It's not that Huawei has Chinese government back doors. Believe me, their tech has been picked over down to the microscopic level, and the firmware decompiled to its constituent bits. The NSA would LOVE to find the tiniest back door, just so they could blare it to the world. They haven't found squat. No, the issue isn't that there are potential Chinese back doors. The real issue is they don't have back doors the US can get into. They were asked, cajoled, even threatened. Put in back doors for us or we'll vilify you. They said no, and suddenly they were public enemy #1.

        I'm gonna need a citation about how bad-ass and unassailable their 5G firmware is, because it is well known to be trash quality. (Recent deep firmware assessment https://info.finitestate.io/hu... [finitestate.io] )

        5G infrastructure runs scores of web services and all Huawei's code is exactly the quality you'd expect from junior college students, the B-team at Cisco, or a cheap outsourced team from ... well.. china. Frankly exactly the sort of messy plausably deniable code base intelligence agencies love. Please, show me

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Excelcia ( 906188 )

          I'm gonna need a citation about how bad-ass and unassailable their 5G firmware is

          I never spoke towards their coding quality. I said it has no back doors. It has been combed from stem to stern looking for them, both in hardware and firmware. That was the original premise Huawei was condemned for, and it made great press sound-bites, but when the time came to pony up with the details they just got vaguer and vaguer with the accusations.

  • .. about US based social media.

    Frankly i give no fucks about CHINA (who has no power to screw me over in my country), but i DO give fucks about the domestic agencies who DO have the power to screw me over in my country that is using U.S. based social media to do so to other people in my country.

    • Re:Wish other countries would scream as much... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @08:16PM (#63354839) Homepage

      Frankly i give no fucks about CHINA (who has no power to screw me over in my country), but i DO give fucks about the domestic agencies who DO have the power to screw me over in my country that is using U.S. based social media to do so to other people in my country.

      Basically this.

      I can call the leader of China "Pooh Bear" all day long and he can't do shit about it. But if I call Ron DeSantis "homophobic", he wants to be able to sue for that [flsenate.gov]. The political nutbags who aren't separated from you by an ocean are the ones you have to worry about.

      • The political nutbags who aren't separated from you by an ocean are the ones you have to worry about.

        Separated by an ocean doesn't mean much. For example the UK controlled other countries economies and currencies and to an extent the daily life of its citizens despite being one or even multiple oceans away.

      • Imagine actually reading what that law is instead of blindly trusting your party.
  • TikTok is a security concern exactly because the phones are not secure. After a decade, there is still inadequate app permissioning and isolation. There are no hardware switches either. Data is leaked all over the place. I guess this is what the government wanted, and now they have to live with it.

    • TikTok is a security concern exactly because the phones are not secure. After a decade, there is still inadequate app permissioning and isolation. There are no hardware switches either. Data is leaked all over the place. I guess this is what the government wanted, and now they have to live with it.

      And that is by design, so the NSA etc can spy on you.

      If the devices were secure such that TikTok *couldn't* do this shit, the US and other 5-eyes nations would be up in ARMS and railing against the phone manufacturers complaining that they are facilitating terrorists and pedophiles.

    • TikTok is a security concern exactly because the phones are not secure.

      Is there any computing platform, meeting whatever standards for permissioning and isolation you deem adequate, that you'd feel confident is secure if you were to allow a malicious state-level actor to execute arbitrary code?

      With the ridiculous complexity of exploits that can be bought on the open market by anyone with a few hundred thousand bucks, I can't imagine what zero days state security services are sitting on.

      • The problem is that the current platform doesn't require any exploits whatsoever to leak data or retrieve leaked data. Just because security is difficult doesn't mean we should stop trying.

  • Every time I see headlines about TikTok I can't shake the feeling a big part of what's really driving it is lobbying from US companies that don't appreciate competition.

    When people mention how bad TikTok is for privacy or how much it rots our minds... ok fine if that's your reason for wanting TikTok gone.

    Yet when you just want the foreign site gone and are quite willing to ignore the rest of the "social media" universe which are no better it becomes quite hard to believe such musings are anything other than

    • Re:What's the real reason? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @07:35PM (#63354735)

      Well, TikTok *DID* take it upon themselves last year to spy on a bunch of journalists, track their locations, and send that data off to China where who even knows what the CCP plans to do with it. Even if TikTok is not shut down, they really do need to be punished... very Very VERY harshly... for that stunt.

      • Well, TikTok *DID* take it upon themselves last year to spy on a bunch of journalists, track their locations, and send that data off to China where who even knows what the CCP plans to do with it. Even if TikTok is not shut down, they really do need to be punished... very Very VERY harshly... for that stunt.

        TikTok fired four employees for spying. Facebook fired 52.

        https://nypost.com/2021/07/13/... [nypost.com]

        • lolwut?

          First off... the New York Post? Try again with a legitimate journalistic source, not a dead-tree version of fox "news."

          Second, even presuming Rupert's little rag had even the slightest shred of legitimacy, try reading the very article you posted. That's about Facebook taking action against its own rogue employees... nothing to see there. There's nothing in that "article" about FB spying on journalists, tracking the location of journalists, or providing any of that data to the Chinese... all three

          • Right.. Media and Hollywood is totally not kowtowing to the CCP in every movie hoping to get access to the Chinese market, and ad supported media has no pressure whatsoever not to anger Chinese companies or any company with capital exposure such as manufacturing facilities in China that could pull its ads.

            'Legitimacy' is totally not a mislabeling of cowardice and greed.

            The oldest newspaper in the US and the most popular news network are fringe.

            Damn populace, damn plebs, some of them are too aware to be mani

          • lolwut?
            First off... the New York Post? Try again with a legitimate journalistic source, not a dead-tree version of fox "news."

            No thanks, if you disagree with the facts presented you are welcome to refute them.

            Second, even presuming Rupert's little rag had even the slightest shred of legitimacy, try reading the very article you posted. That's about Facebook taking action against its own rogue employees... nothing to see there. There's nothing in that "article" about FB spying on journalists, tracking the location of journalists, or providing any of that data to the Chinese... all three of which TikTok DID, in fact, do:

            Do you have evidence TikTok directed this and it wasn't just a few employees taking the initiative? If you don't what's the difference?

            This shit has been going on since the beginning of time itself. Whether it is rouge telco employees selling data to criminal enterprises, NSA employees perusing LOVEINT or foreign governments paying off minimum wage CSRs to exfil data on high value targets. The people doing it are not terri

      • If you're dumb enough to sign into google/facebook/twitter/apple/tiktok etc with your real name, then I suppose you're going to be spied on and there's no helping it.

        The real problem with TikTok is that as Scott Adams said it's a user interface in the hands of the CCP for controlling the minds of the youth. It's basically a brainwashing machine that lets whoever controls it at the heads of the most vulnerable minds.

        China has its own idea of what 'hate speech' is and what should be boosted and what should b

    • what bothers me is the increasing amount of mommy-ism progressives seem to want out of their government. use tiktok, or don't.
      if you're part of the military, government, or otherwise privy to sensitive information; then your organization can and absolutely should ban the app on their devices. if you're a parent and don't want your kids using tiktok, then that's your prerogative.

      These are all sensible actions. But at the end of the day personal choice is paramount.

      what's clownshit insane is having the fed

      • What's really odd though, is that apple and google are both eerily silent on the issue. I wonder why that is?

        Apple doesn't have a dog in this fight one way or the other. They're more concerned with maintaining control over their walled garden and ability to block 3rd party hardware repairs at the moment.

        Google stands to gain if TikTok is banned. They can just sit back and munch popcorn. YouTube Shorts is bound to gain a bunch of TikTok refugees, following a ban.

        • Well, I guess where I was going with that was if tiktok is deemed to be an actual national security risk, and the means by which users access the app is through your store, using your device/OS; that might put you in a bit of a pickle, no? (and isn't part of the app vetting process specifically looking into such things? christ, apps are vetted for export control restrictions due encryption standards for example)
          and then on the other side of the issue, if they cared about their users and are cognizant that m

          • Apple already has banned quite a few apps. App bans on Android are basically meaningless, since the OS allows sideloading as a user selectable option. The open source media player Kodi is a good example. It's available on Google Play, but it's banned on iOS and Fire OS. However, since Fire OS is based on Android you can easily sideload it.

            As much as I'd like to imagine the government being completely clueless in this matter, I'd imagine they are aware that banning the app itself would really only serve

    • The real reason is Meta already has a TikTok competitor woven into Facebook, and Facebook has been having trouble winning over the GenZ market. You don't need a crystal ball to see how this is gonna turn out.

  • Your own government is ddoing all this and more to it's own citizens,

  • except they silently transmitted all data to the US without the owners even noticing.
    Then it was just called an 'upgrade'.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/techn... [reddit.com]

  • This talk of banning TikTok (Score:3)

    by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @07:54PM (#63354795)
    is all a conspiracy by Big VPN!

  • "US social media screams of national security concern".

    I can imagine that headline on an imaginary Chinese Slashdot story and it wouldn't feel inaccurate in the slightest.

    • I can imagine that headline on an imaginary Chinese Slashdot story and it wouldn't feel inaccurate in the slightest.

      There's no need to imagine it. The translation plugin in Chrome works pretty well. Here's China's perspective [china.com.cn]:

      Fang Dongxing Qiushi Distinguished Professor of Zhejiang University, Dean of Wuzhen Institute of Digital Civilization

      Political performances around "banning TikTok" have recently appeared frequently in American politics, and have begun to spread to Canada and some European countries. On March 1, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill authorizing President B

  • FBI told social media and news what to censor; video releases of Jan 6 show FBI may have been guilty of incitement and terrorism, besides their refusing to answer questions under oath if they were doing such.

    FBI and other three letter agencies are the threat to USA, China not so much.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      Bullshit

      • nice argument there. meanwhile, we already have proof FBI and other three letter agencies meeting with social media and major news to target people, censor, deplatform, etc.

        Wake up

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          That was more than your bullshit post deserved. Get your head out of your ass.

          • You haven't said one word that counters what I said, just making juvenile insults. Are you a 12 year old?

            FBI and other government agencies have targeted people and censored on social media. that is fact.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by narcc ( 412956 )

              I don't play with other people's shit. Fuck off, troll.

              • You're willfully ignorant the troll denying reality; you have your eyes and eyes plugged with your own shit.

                The FBI and other agencies have been caught censoring, targeting and even calling local police on those with views that aren't the fake liberal agenda. Mainstream news now.

  • "1965, the Doors are leaving a theater and see a movie poster that inspired a scream heard around the world! Warning: Hippie nudity."

    https://youtu.be/K6svew4k5N0 [youtu.be]

  • So does Facebook (Score:3)

    by dark.nebulae ( 3950923 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @10:25PM (#63355023)

    Facebook "screams" of security concerns for all citizens (not just in the US).

    I don't see them running around trying to ban Facebook from devices as I wish they would...

  • It's not as though this hasn't been known for more than three years. [duckduckgo.com]

    Even if you take out the hits concerned with emotional and social damage, there are still a lot remaining which deal with privacy and security issues. My guess is that the FBI is screaming loudly now because of the "China is BAD" political climate.

    That in itself is telling, given how long we've known that China really is bad. Uyghur genocide? Meh. Disappear your own citizens? Ho-hum. Kidnap citizens of nominally-free nations? That's just a

  • Wow. Donald Trump was and is 100% correct, yet the liberals just can't tolarate their point of view being questioned.

  • But the method of dealing with that threat has to pass very strict constitutional muster to avoid giving the Executive branch the power to suppress communications platforms without due process. It's very likely that current trade powers are adequate to address the threat, and the government is refusing to use those powers as an excuse to seek more.

  • We are dying out here!

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