Yesterday the TikTok CEO was grilled by U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill. TikTok is a Chinese company, and China has laws that state that every tech company must give unfettered back-door access to their entire systems to the Chinese security state. As in, everything TikTok knows, the Chinese secret police and military know. They don’t need to ask; they don’t need to go to court to get a search warrant. It’s China. It’s a dictatorship. They just take it. It’s not a secret.
You might say — so what does TikTok know about its users that is so damaging to U.S. and Canadian national security? I mean, half of TikTok is silly video trends. But that’s the bait — the fun video sing-alongs. The fun video filters, like the one that — I don’t know how they do it — make you look like you’re 20 years young.
ONLINE PRIVACY
But the worrying part is that the app is on your phone, and it has access to everything. You give it access to everything on your phone. Your friends list. Your photos and videos. Your GPS location.
It asks you for permission, you click yes, and it has the information. Over 100 million Americans have opted-in.
Here’s a link to their privacy policy.
Who do we share your information with?
We share your data with third-party service providers who help us to deliver the Platform, such as cloud storage providers. We also share your information with business partners, other companies in the same group as TikTok, content moderation services, measurement providers, advertisers, and analytics providers. Where and when required by law, we will share your information with law enforcement agencies or regulators, and with third parties pursuant to a legally binding court order.
That’s a gentle way of saying they share it with anyone they want — including the Chinese government.
Look at this paragraph:
_User Content and Behavioural Information. We process the content you generate and view on the Platform, including preferences you set (such as choice of language) photographs, audios and videos you upload or create, comments and livestreams you make (“User Content”). We collect User Content through pre-loading at the time of creation, import, or upload, regardless of whether you choose to save or upload that User Content, in order to recommend audio options and provide other personalized recommendations.
We may collect information about the images and audio that are a part of your User Content, such as identifying the objects and scenery that appear, the existence and location within an image of face and body features and attributes, the nature of the audio, and the text of the words spoken in your User Content._
We may access content, including text, images, and video, found in your device’s clipboard, with your permission.
It goes on. You give them everything, forever, for free, for them to do whatever they like.
HAN DONG
I mean, it’s bad, sure. But is it as bad as having an accused Chinese agent sitting in your Parliament, as part of the government?
Dong's been accused of working with the Chinese dictatorship, advising them to keep the two Michaels in prison longer.
The Trudeau government determined that there was no “actionable evidence” after it received a CSIS transcript of an early 2021 conversation between Liberal MP Han Dong and China’s top diplomat in Toronto, according to a senior government source – saying conclusions could not be drawn that Mr. Dong asked Beijing to keep two Canadians in prison for political reasons.
What was he doing reporting to Beijing? He’s not a foreign minister.
TIKTOK AND HUAWEI
TikTok is awful. And don’t think Facebook and YouTube are any better — we know from what Twitter has disclosed under Elon Musk that they were the same. Twitter was basically in the service of the CIA and FBI. So of course TikTok is in the service of China’s PLA.
I don’t mind the idea of banning TikTok — it’s malware, it’s spyware, it feels like a toy, a game, a hobby, whatever, an entertainment, but it’s an espionage tool — just