{"id":3268,"date":"2020-08-18T11:49:01","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T11:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2020-08-18T11:49:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T11:49:01","slug":"do-you-really-need-to-worry-about-your-security-on-tiktok-heres-what-we-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=3268","title":{"rendered":"Do you really need to worry about your security on TikTok? Here\u2019s what we know."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“TikTok has repeatedly denied that it has or ever would give up user data to the Chinese government. The company says it stores American user data on servers in the US and Singapore, which ostensibly would make it harder for the Chinese government to tap into. The company has also taken measures to separate its US business overall from its Chinese parent company. For example, TikTok doesn\u2019t operate in China (the Chinese version of it, Douyin, does<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CIA reportedly investigated TikTok\u2019s security threat and found no proof that Chinese intelligence authorities have been snooping on Americans through TikTok, according to the New York Times<\/a>. The agency\u2019s assessment still found that Chinese authorities could potentially tap into Americans\u2019 data through the app, according to the Times\u2019s summary of the classified report. That\u2019s why last December, the Department of Defense cautioned<\/a> military personnel to delete TikTok from their smartphones over security concerns. And the Senate voted unanimously to ban federal employees<\/a> from using TikTok on government devices last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no publicly available evidence that TikTok has ever done anything wrong,\u201d said Segal, \u201cbut the concern is that because the Chinese National Intelligence Law of 2017<\/a> says any Chinese company can be drafted into espionage, a company could be forced to hand over the data.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A second area of concern is that apps like TikTok and WeChat censor content that the Chinese Communist Party disapproves of. On this front, there are more documented concerns, especially about WeChat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WeChat has been found to intercept and censor political messages sent by Chinese users<\/a> to US users. A report in May by Canadian researchers CitizenLab found that the app was blocking certain messages, including a political cartoon depicting the late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was critical of the Chinese government. The report also found that WeChat was analyzing messages sent by international users, including those in the US, to scan for and block politically sensitive content before it could circulate among Chinese users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 With TikTok, there have been accusations \u2014 without definitive proof \u2014 of censorship at the behest of the Chinese government. Last year, internal company documents showed TikTok was instructing its staff to moderate content in line with the Chinese government\u2019s censorship of topics like the Tiananmen Square massacre and Free Tibet<\/a>, according to leaked guidelines published by the Guardian<\/a>. But these guidelines were part of broad rules against controversial discussions on international politics across countries, so there\u2019s no explicit proof that this was a directive from the Chinese government to TikTok. Another oft-cited concern about potential political censorship on TikTok is that during last year\u2019s Hong Kong independence protests, there weren\u2019t a lot of results for popular hashtags of the protest movement<\/a>. But there\u2019s no proof that the company was actively censoring content or whether people just weren\u2019t posting about it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s important to put all of this in context. TikTok and WeChat\u2019s political troubles in the US don\u2019t exist in a vacuum, but rather inside a larger web of complex China-US politics. Since 2018, Trump has waged a trade war with China over free trade policies<\/a> that he feels disadvantage US manufacturing. And increasingly, tech has become tangled up in this war, involving Chinese-owned dating apps, drone companies, and telecom hardware makers.”
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 …
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Chesney stressed, the US isn\u2019t making the first move here. American companies have long been banned in China, where companies that started off by building copycats of major US tech apps \u2014 Baidu is China\u2019s answer to Google, Didi its Uber, Weibo its Twitter \u2014 have grown into tech powerhouses. US social media companies have tried, unsuccessfully, to enter the Chinese market.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Several analysts told Recode that some of the concern about TikTok and other Chinese technology companies is valid. But the way the TikTok order in particular has been executed \u2014 with Trump going back and forth on whether he\u2019d approve a TikTok-Microsoft sale, and at one point demanding a cut of the deal \u2014 has been haphazard and has given the global business community a sense of distrust toward the US government.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/recode\/2020\/8\/11\/21363092\/why-is-tiktok-national-security-threat-wechat-trump-ban<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“TikTok has repeatedly denied that it has or ever would give up user data to the Chinese government. The company says it stores American user data on servers in the US and Singapore, which ostensibly would make it harder for the Chinese government to tap into. The company has also taken measures to separate its US business overall from its Chinese parent company. For example, TikTok doesn\u2019t operate in China (the Chinese version of it, Douyin, does).<\/p>\n

The CIA reportedly investigated TikTok\u2019s security threat and found no proof that Chinese intelligence authorities have been snooping on Americans through TikTok, according to the New York Times. The agency\u2019s assessment still found that Chinese authorities could potentially tap into Americans\u2019 data through the app, according to the Times\u2019s summary of the classified report. That\u2019s why last December, the Department of Defense cautioned military personnel to delete TikTok from their smartphones over security concerns. And the Senate voted unanimously to ban federal employees from using TikTok on government devices last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no publicly available evidence that TikTok has ever done anything wrong,\u201d said Segal, \u201cbut the concern is that because the Chinese National Intelligence Law of 2017 says any Chinese company can be drafted into espionage, a company could be forced to hand over the data.\u201d”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“A second area of concern is that apps like TikTok and WeChat censor content that the Chinese Communist Party disapproves of. On this front, there are more documented concerns, especially about WeChat.<\/p>\n

WeChat has been found to intercept and censor political messages sent by Chinese users to US users. A report in May by Canadian researchers CitizenLab found that the app was blocking certain messages, including a political cartoon depicting the late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was critical of the Chinese government. The report also found that WeChat was analyzing messages sent by international users, including those in the US, to scan for and block politically sensitive content before it could circulate among Chinese users.<\/p>\n

With TikTok, there have been accusations \u2014 without definitive proof \u2014 of censorship at the behest of the Chinese government. Last year, internal company documents showed TikTok was instructing its staff to moderate content in line with the Chinese government\u2019s censorship of topics like the Tiananmen Square massacre and Free Tibet, according to leaked guidelines published by the Guardian. But these guidelines were part of broad rules against controversial discussions on international politics across countries, so there\u2019s no explicit proof that this was a directive from the Chinese government to TikTok. Another oft-cited concern about potential political censorship on TikTok is that during last year\u2019s Hong Kong independence protests, there weren\u2019t a lot of results for popular hashtags of the protest movement. But there\u2019s no proof that the company was actively censoring content or whether people just weren\u2019t posting about it.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s important to put all of this in context. TikTok and WeChat\u2019s political troubles in the US don\u2019t exist in a vacuum, but rather inside a larger web of complex China-US politics. Since 2018, Trump has waged a trade war with China over free trade policies that he feels disadvantage US manufacturing. And increasingly, tech has become tangled up in this war, involving Chinese-owned dating apps, drone companies, and telecom hardware makers.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Chesney stressed, the US isn\u2019t making the first move here. American companies have long been banned in China, where companies that started off by building copycats of major US tech apps \u2014 Baidu is China\u2019s answer to Google, Didi its Uber, Weibo its Twitter \u2014 have grown into tech powerhouses. US social media companies have tried, unsuccessfully, to enter the Chinese market.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Several analysts told Recode that some of the concern about TikTok and other Chinese technology companies is valid. But the way the TikTok order in particular has been executed \u2014 with Trump going back and forth on whether he\u2019d approve a TikTok-Microsoft sale, and at one point demanding a cut of the deal \u2014 has been haphazard and has given the global business community a sense of distrust toward the US government.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[221,355,314,88,170],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-donald-trump","tag-foreign-policy","tag-international-relations","tag-tiktok","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3269,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions\/3269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}