For the past four years the Biden administration and TikTok have been negotiating a deal to resolve national security concerns posed by the Chinese-owned app. Here’s a look inside a draft of the deal.
So these two provisions caught my eye; under the draft agreement, executive branch agencies (the article gives the example of the DOJ or DOD) would have the ability to (among other things)
Examine TikTok’s U.S. facilities, records, equipment and servers with minimal or no notice,
In some circumstances, require ByteDance to temporarily stop TikTok from functioning in the United States.
In the case of the former, would that include user data? Given the general US gov approach to digital privacy I assume so, and granting yourself the power to do the things you’re afraid China is doing seems appropriately ironic for us.
As far as the latter, I wonder how broadly “some circumstances” is defined. If the language is broad enough, that would open the door to de facto censorship if a certain trend or info around a certain event is spreading on the site right as the government magically decides it needs to pause TikTok due to, “uh, terrorism or something, don’t worry about it.”
I’m also curious how durable this agreement would be. How hard would it be for the next administration to decide to pitch a fit and renegotiate or throw out the deal pending a new, even harsher agreement?
It would seem to me that this is pretty nakedly an assertion of power over an entity based outside the US, and not an agreement meant to protect US citizens in any meaningful way. I think any defense of this agreement as a way to protect privacy or mental health or whatever won’t be able to honestly reconcile with the fact that these exact same concerns exist with domestic social media companies
I mean, it’s not just because it’s outside the US. It’s because ByteDance is legally required to collect and hand over data to the Chinese government. And it’s well beyond what any other social media app does plus unnecessary for the functionality of the app. This is not about xenophobia. This is legit about trying to stop the Chinese government from spying on US citizens who are too ignorant to realize what that app is. They just care about stupid videos.
Edit: for example, if you’re on a government network, there’s a good chance half your calls to GitHub hosted content will timeout with no response. Why? Because GitHub has load balances that direct traffic occasionally through a server hosted under Chinese jurisdiction. That route is explicitly blocked so any time your request gets sent there, it simply fails. China is not a trusted foreign government under US law. And the Chinese government found a novel way to legally spy on the United States and the citizenry are too stupid to prevent it so the government is trying to fix it without calling the public a bunch of idiots like they are.
But even if you grant the two premises there, that TikTok’s data collection is beyond that of other apps, and that said data is given to the PRC to access, this draft agreement’s solution to those problems is “let us access that collected data instead of them”. It implements measures that would affect future changes to TOS and policies, but I don’t see anything about scaling back what’s collected now. From what I can tell, this is just trying to replace who’s steering the ship. If the solution that “stops the Chinese government from spying on US citizens” just changes the government that’s doing the spying, I don’t see how that helps said US citizens in any way. The CPC isn’t the one who can put me on a no-fly list on a whim.
That’s my fundamental issue with this, as well as the relevant proposed legislation; it’s not a good-faith attempt to protect US citizens.
I’m pretty sure access to records doesn’t mean business data. It’s more likely business records. The US government wouldn’t be able to efficiently go through that data anyway. Big Data doesn’t work that way.
It’s like saying you’re going to copy YouTube videos as they’re uploaded.
The US government as I work for them. The IP in question is blocked for that reason.
Edit: Slack was also intermittent a few years back due to the same kind of situation. China owns a decent amount of internet infrastructure. It’s fine for normal traffic as TLS and the like is enough for the average person, but the US government doesn’t risk it on their administrative or development networks.
And it’s well beyond what any other social media app does plus unnecessary for the functionality of the app.
I’ll need to rewatch this to remember the specifics, but this privacy YouTuber named Rob Braxman did a comparison of the permissions and terms from Tik Tok and other social media apps, and Tik Tok came out quite favourably: https://youtu.be/VIakTNOhNSE
Chinese government spying or interference in the algorithm is probably real, but it’s still a far superior product at the end of the day, which tells you something about how bad the competition is. To compare Tik Tok to Instagram reels is completely absurd.
So these two provisions caught my eye; under the draft agreement, executive branch agencies (the article gives the example of the DOJ or DOD) would have the ability to (among other things)
In the case of the former, would that include user data? Given the general US gov approach to digital privacy I assume so, and granting yourself the power to do the things you’re afraid China is doing seems appropriately ironic for us.
As far as the latter, I wonder how broadly “some circumstances” is defined. If the language is broad enough, that would open the door to de facto censorship if a certain trend or info around a certain event is spreading on the site right as the government magically decides it needs to pause TikTok due to, “uh, terrorism or something, don’t worry about it.”
I’m also curious how durable this agreement would be. How hard would it be for the next administration to decide to pitch a fit and renegotiate or throw out the deal pending a new, even harsher agreement?
It would seem to me that this is pretty nakedly an assertion of power over an entity based outside the US, and not an agreement meant to protect US citizens in any meaningful way. I think any defense of this agreement as a way to protect privacy or mental health or whatever won’t be able to honestly reconcile with the fact that these exact same concerns exist with domestic social media companies
So basically, the US government doesn’t actually mind all the creepy data harvesting; it just minds not getting a spot at the trough. Typical.
I mean, it’s not just because it’s outside the US. It’s because ByteDance is legally required to collect and hand over data to the Chinese government. And it’s well beyond what any other social media app does plus unnecessary for the functionality of the app. This is not about xenophobia. This is legit about trying to stop the Chinese government from spying on US citizens who are too ignorant to realize what that app is. They just care about stupid videos.
Edit: for example, if you’re on a government network, there’s a good chance half your calls to GitHub hosted content will timeout with no response. Why? Because GitHub has load balances that direct traffic occasionally through a server hosted under Chinese jurisdiction. That route is explicitly blocked so any time your request gets sent there, it simply fails. China is not a trusted foreign government under US law. And the Chinese government found a novel way to legally spy on the United States and the citizenry are too stupid to prevent it so the government is trying to fix it without calling the public a bunch of idiots like they are.
But even if you grant the two premises there, that TikTok’s data collection is beyond that of other apps, and that said data is given to the PRC to access, this draft agreement’s solution to those problems is “let us access that collected data instead of them”. It implements measures that would affect future changes to TOS and policies, but I don’t see anything about scaling back what’s collected now. From what I can tell, this is just trying to replace who’s steering the ship. If the solution that “stops the Chinese government from spying on US citizens” just changes the government that’s doing the spying, I don’t see how that helps said US citizens in any way. The CPC isn’t the one who can put me on a no-fly list on a whim.
That’s my fundamental issue with this, as well as the relevant proposed legislation; it’s not a good-faith attempt to protect US citizens.
I’m pretty sure access to records doesn’t mean business data. It’s more likely business records. The US government wouldn’t be able to efficiently go through that data anyway. Big Data doesn’t work that way.
It’s like saying you’re going to copy YouTube videos as they’re uploaded.
Where the hell did you get that from? Do you have a source for that?
The US government as I work for them. The IP in question is blocked for that reason.
Edit: Slack was also intermittent a few years back due to the same kind of situation. China owns a decent amount of internet infrastructure. It’s fine for normal traffic as TLS and the like is enough for the average person, but the US government doesn’t risk it on their administrative or development networks.
I’ll need to rewatch this to remember the specifics, but this privacy YouTuber named Rob Braxman did a comparison of the permissions and terms from Tik Tok and other social media apps, and Tik Tok came out quite favourably: https://youtu.be/VIakTNOhNSE
Chinese government spying or interference in the algorithm is probably real, but it’s still a far superior product at the end of the day, which tells you something about how bad the competition is. To compare Tik Tok to Instagram reels is completely absurd.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/VIakTNOhNSE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I love that you’re just cool with an oppositional government spying because you like the pretty videos. Please, tell me more intelligent things.
And please, where did I mention Reels? And what makes it a far superior product behind marketing? What can TikTok do that any other can’t?
Great response. Definitely I want to continue the discussion.
not related. But this kind of reminds me of https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257 specifically:
So, at least it’s nothing new. there’s precedence for it in existing law.
I’m so glad to hear some of you are self aware.