What Have We Learned about TikTok, Microsoft Exchange Server and the Cyber-Possible Violations of Wikipedia?

With a threat of a ban averted in 2020, TikTok has now found itself under scrutiny from state and federal lawmakers in the United States over concerns about its ties to China, and fears that it could have a harmful impact on young people.

After revelations that employees of Byte Dance have accessed the data of US users over the last few years, the number of people wanting to ban the app has grown.

As the war between Russia and Ukraine continues, Ukrainian forces are proving to be resilient and have mounted more intense attacks on Moscow. But as the conflict evolves, it is entering an ominous phase of drone warfare. Russia has begun launching a series of recent attacks using Iranian “suicide drones” to inflict damage that is difficult to defend against. NATO officials are keeping a close eye on Russian President Putin’s statements about the potential for a nuclear strike, and we will look into what indicators are available to the community to assess whether Russia is actually preparing to use nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, an unrelenting string of deeply problematic vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Exchange Server on-premises email hosting service has left researchers to raise the alarm that the platform isn’t getting the development resources it needs anymore, and customers should seriously consider migrating to cloud email hosting. And new research examines how Wikipedia’s custodians ferret out state-sponsored disinformation campaigns in the crowdsourced encyclopedia’s entries.

If you’re concerned about the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks in the United States, researchers pointed out that middle-of-the-pack groups like the Vice Society are maximizing their profits by investing very little in technical innovation. They don’t target sectors like health care or education, instead they run the most mundane operations they can. If you’re looking for a way to protect yourself, we can give you a guide to setting up passkeys on the internet.

The tiktokbyte-americans data security roundup: What’s going on with the cloud? A fresh look at the unsolved case

And there’s more. We highlight the news that wasn’t covered by us. The full stories can be found below. Staying safe is what you need to do out there.

Microsoft said this week that a misconfiguration exposed the data of some prospective customers of its cloud services. Researchers from the threat intelligence firm SOCRadar disclosed the leak to Microsoft on September 24, and the company quickly closed the exposure. In a report, it was said that the information was exposed from as far back as August of this year. More than 65,000 organizations were linked to the data. Microsoft said the exposed details included names, company names, phone numbers, email addresses, email content, and files sent between potential customers and Microsoft or one of its authorized partners. Cloud misconfigurations are a longstanding security risk that have led to countless exposures and, sometimes, breaches.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-bytedance-americans-data-security-roundup/

The Security of Internet of Things Devices: The United States at an Internet Security Summit Presented at the Joint National Security Council, San Francisco, Italy, June 24 – 27

There is no easy answer to improve the security of the dumpster fire created by cheap, undefended internet of things devices around the world. But after years of problems, countries like Singapore and Germany have found that adding security labels to internet-connected video cameras, printers, toothbrushes, and more. The labels give consumers a better understanding of the protections built into different devices—and give manufacturers an incentive to improve their practices and get a gold seal. The United States made a step in this direction this week. The White House is working on a labeling scheme that will be similar to Energystar for internet of things digital security. The summit was held to discuss standards and guidelines for the labels. A labeling program to secure devices would provide American consumers with peace of mind that the technology being brought into their homes is safe and will encourage manufacturers to meet higher cybersecurity standards, said a National Security Council spokesman.

Sources told The Washington Post this week that sensitive information related to Iran‘s nuclear program and the United States’ own intelligence operations in China were included in documents seized by the FBI this summer at former President Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Experts say unauthorized disclosures of certain information in the documents pose a number of risks. People aiding US intelligence efforts could be endangered, and collection methods could be compromised,” the Post wrote. The US could potentially be retaliated against by other countries.

Open internet proponents were relieved last month when an American candidate beat a Russian challenger in an election to run the International Telecommunications Union, an important international standards body tasked with cross-boundary communications. Meanwhile, though, we took a look at the fragility of the world’s internet infrastructure and the vulnerability of crucial undersea cables.

The US’s legal climate for abortion access encourages a culture of community surveillement similar to authoritarian states where neighbors and friends are encouraged to report possible wrongdoing, according to researchers. There is an increase in the number of people watching soccer stadiums around the world. There will be more than 15,000 cameras at the eight stadiums that will be used for the World Cup in Qatar.

Liz is having a difficult time: A security roundup of the most important vulnerabilities that you can (and should!) install in Rust

The more secure, “memory safe” programming language Rust is making inroads across the tech industry, offering hope that a massive swath of common vulnerabilities could eventually be preempted and eliminated. In the meantime, we’ve got a roundup of the most important vulnerabilities that you can—and should!—patch right now.

Liz is having a difficult time. Soon after her historically brief stint as the UK prime minister, the Mail on Sunday reported that agents working on behalf of Russia had hacked her personal cell phone when she was foreign minister. Russian operatives were able to intercept messages between Truss and officials in other countries. Boris Johnson and Simon Case suppressed theFka, according to the report. Labor Party officials are calling for an urgent investigation into their Conservative opponents. The Labor Party’s shadow home secretary said last weekend that the national security issues raised by an attack like this would be taken very seriously by our intelligence and security agencies. “There are also serious security questions around why and how this information has been leaked or released right now, which must also be urgently investigated.”

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-eu-privacy-policy-security-roundup/

Investigations of the Cash App and Threats to Financial Crimes: The US Treasury Department Adopts a Non-Spame Cyber-Money

Another of Jack Dorsey’s corporate creations is facing new heat this week. Sex traffickers in the US and elsewhere are said to be helped by the Cash App. Based on police records, “hundreds of court filings,” and claims by former Cash App employees, the investigation found rampant use of the Cash App in sex trafficking and other crimes. The company, which is owned by Dorsey-led Block Inc., maintains that it “does not tolerate illegal activity on Cash App” and has staff dedicated to working with law enforcement. Meanwhile, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that although rival payment platforms like PayPal provide the the center with tips about potential child abuse facilitated by their services, Forbes writes, “Block hasn’t provided any tips, ever.”

The US Treasury Department this week said US financial institutions facilitated ransomware payments totaling nearly $1.2 billion in 2021—a 200 percent increase since 2020. The report landed as a result of an international White House summit intended to fight the rise of a type of software called ransomware, which lets attackers hold a target’s files for ransom until the victim pays. The acting director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said in a statement that there remain serious threats to our national and economic security. The number is painful, but does not take into account the costs and other financial consequences that come from a payment not being made.

The bill gives government agencies the authority to disrupt or prohibit services they deem threatening if they have access to sensitive personal data of more than 1 million US persons. That could potentially mean forcing American companies — including app store operators like Apple and Google — to cut off relations with TikTok or similar entities. The bill provides the Commerce secretary with lesser options to mitigate risky transactions, like being able to force companies to abandon services.

The proposed legislation would “block and prohibit all transactions” in the United States by social media companies with at least one million monthly users that are based in, or under the “substantial influence” of, countries that are considered foreign adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

In December of last year the ban of TikTok on federal devices was passed without any discussion, and it has served as a model for other world governments.

The multi-year saga of TikTok’s struggles in Washington is approaching a dramatic climax. Two different visions of the company will be on display when the CEO testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“We will continue to brief members of Congress on the plans that have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States,” McQuaide added.

TikTok: A Social Media Platform Bringing Out New Genres, New Technologies, and New Trends in Social Media and Social Media

The first version of this article appeared in the newsletter. You’ll get a daily digest on the evolving media landscape.

The app has been used by some public universities and government agencies, but at least 16 states are trying to stop the app from being used in state government networks.

There would be exceptions for law enforcement activity, national security interests, and security researchers.

“I do think TikTok’s strongest argument to date is drawing on its creator user base,” Gorman said. But for some lawmakers with security concerns, the latest push “may be too little too late.”

The administration has a conflicting approach to TikTok, embracing its usefulness to the public, but also fearful of its potential as a tool of foreign influence. Seemingly overnight, TikTok has managed to remake American culture both low and high, from media and music to memes and celebrity, in its own image. The author Colleen Hoover had more copies of her book sold this year than the Bible, thanks to TikTok turning a young person into a household name. TikTok introduced a new dialect of words, dubbed “seggs,” “unalive” and “le dollar bean,” that is now spreading across pop culture. Corporations and brands have shifted billions of dollars worth of advertising to the platform in order to see how the platform can turn even decades-old products into must-have items. TikTok had more visits to its site last year than the other two major internet companies. Facebook took almost nine years to reach one billion users; TikTok did it in five.

The China Investigation of TikTok and its Implications for Users’ Privacy and Data Retrieval: Zi Chew, U.S. Citizens, and CFIUS

The company has admitted that employees in China accessed the data of U.S. users who were journalists reporting on company leaks — an incident now being investigated by Justice Department.

Most drastic measures have not advanced since the efforts lacked the political will or courts stopped them.

“I think some concern about TikTok is warranted,” said Julian McAuley, a professor of computer science at the University of California San Diego, who noted that the main difference between TikTok and other social media apps is that TikTok is much more driven by user-specific recommendations.

“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Zi Chew will say, according to written testimony released by the House committee on Tuesday night.

It wasn’t lost on him that American companies have made similar mistakes before. With so much respect, American social companies don’t have a good record with user security and data privacy. For one example, just look at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

On Monday, a TikTok official presented a keynote detailing Project Texas, the company’s most substantial effort to mitigate foreign threats to US data. The proposal would wall off most of TikTok’s US operations from ByteDance, its Chinese parent company. Larry Ellison’s database would be useful in auditing American data flows.

Another possible resolution is that the committee is satisfied with the steps TikTok has taken to ensure there is a firewall between U.S. user data and ByteDance employees in Beijing and the Chinese government.

CFIUS deliberations are famously secretive and happen behind closed doors. It is not clear which way the committee is leaning or when it will finish its investigation.

Can a ban of the popular Chinese social media app, TikTok, solve the national security problem? The perspectives of U.S. and China’s

Nebraska has had a ban in place since 2020, which covers all state devices. The Florida Department of Financial Services has also done so. Louisiana and West Virginia had some sort of partial ban.

In fact, China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires Chinese companies to furnish any customer information relevant to China’s national security. TikTok has more user information than any other popular social media app. There is no evidence that ByteDance has given this information to the Chinese government. ByteDance admitted in December that it had fired some employees for snooping on American citizens and journalists via TikTok, despite the fact that it only happened in China and the U.S.

China doesn’t allow the internet or this newspaper to be used by its own citizens. America won when it can show the world that it is an open and democratic country, and that is the symbolic value of that asymmetry. It is likely that banning TikTok will not be seen by other countries as different from the actions of the People’s Republic of China. It’s also not certain that the federal government can, under the First Amendment, simply prohibit access to a significant communications platform or that it can control online content so as to preclude disinformation. And then there’s the political question of whether TikTok’s estimated 100 million American fans will allow it to be taken away from them.

“It certainly makes sense, then, for U.S. soldiers to be told, ‘Hey, don’t use the app because it might share your location information with other entities,” said Chander. “But that is also the case with the weather app, as well as lots of other apps that are existing in your phone, whether or not they are owned by China.”

The national security concern about the wildly popular Chinese-owned video app, TikTok, would be solved if a ban of the app were to be enacted. It is possible that a ban on such things would put our national security at greater risk. It would sidestep a bigger problem, our nation’s failure to address concerns over the huge amount of personal data collected in our digital lives, especially when that data could be used by foreign adversaries.

Chew attempted to allay the longstanding concerns about the app and called the fears of Chinese government access to TikTok’s user data “hypothetical.”

The Case Against Commercial Information Surveillance and its Implications for the US Economy, Politics and Wall Street Reform: A Critique of China’s Privacy Laws

“It’s always easy – and this happens across the world – to say that a foreign government is a threat, and ‘I’m protecting you from that foreign government,’ he says. “And I think we should be a little cautious about how that can be politicized in a way that far exceeds the actual threat in order to achieve political ends.”

TikTok is something of a cultural mainstay for internet commentary, comedy and political expression, so lawmakers are worried how it will affect a generation of young people.

He said that the United States should be considering the consequences of having so much commercial surveillance taking place. “And we should do something to address it, but not in this ad hoc posturing way, but by passing comprehensive privacy rules or laws, which is something that, for example, the Federal Trade Commission seems very interested in doing.”

But it isn’t just lobbying that has made some of these bills difficult to pass. It is more difficult to impose sweeping regulations on an entire industry than it is to pass a bill governing how the US Government handles its own technology.

The stark difference between the two illustrates how simple narratives, well-funded lobbying and genuinely thorny policy questions can make or break a bill. It also hints at how a select few Big Tech companies continue to maintain their dominance in the market and their centrality in the lives of countless US households.

China’s laws could be used to pressure TikTok or ByteDance to hand over user data that could be used for intelligence or propaganda purposes, according to US officials.

“We think a lot of the concerns are maybe overblown,” Beckerman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, “but we do think these problems can be solved” through the ongoing government negotiations.

Tech Lobbying and the Digital Economy: Putting Tech-Focused Content Towards the Next-Generation Masses

In 2019, ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent $270,000 on lobbying, according to public records gathered by the transparency group OpenSecrets. The company spent more than $5 million on lobbying last year, when it had doubled its lobbyist count.

Last year Meta spent upwards of $20 million on internet industry lobbying. Next was Amazon at $19 million, then Google at almost $10 million. The TikTok parent spent almost 10 times as much on lobbying as the combined amount.

The supporters of AICOA wanted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring the bill to a floor vote so they could make their voices heard. But between intense tech lobbying and doubts about whether the bill did in fact have the votes, it never received the floor time its supporters wanted. The same fate awaited other tech-focused antitrust bills, such as one that would have forced Apple to allow users to download iPhone apps from any website, not just its own app store.

Lawmakers seemed to be prepared to pass a bill that would force Meta and other platforms to pay news organizations more money for their ads. But the legislation stumbled after Meta warned it could have to drop news content from its platforms altogether if the bill passed.

Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.

Rules government may impose on tech platforms have brought into question how those rules may affect various parts of the economy from small businesses to individual users.

In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Section 230 allows social media companies to leave out hate speech and offensive content if they want to, which is why Democrats say it should be changed.

The cross-cutting politics and the technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology, not to mention the potential consequences for the economy of screwing it up, have combined to make it genuinely difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

The Bennet-by-Law Senate Enforcing a Security Proposed by the ByteDance App Store “Project Texas”

“It’s really important to establishing a Republican brand. A central tenet of what unites Republicans now is taking a strong stance [and] standing up to China,” says Thad Kousser, professor of political science at U.C. San Diego.

Tech CEOs in Silicon Valley are known to be household names, and the faces of the company they lead. Jack Dorsey was the bearded face of Twitter before it was acquired by Elon Musk. At a time when the TikTok app cannot seem to escape it, Chew has largely stayed out of the spotlight.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was reportedly considering offering a bill to ban a broader “category of applications” that could be applied to other apps that pose security risks, according to Axios.

The app, owned by ByteDance, Inc., was banned in the US by the president but it never went through because ByteDance sued to get it back.

In a letter addressed to the companies’ Chief executives, Sen. Michael Bennet demanded that they remove TikTok from their app stores.

At a media briefing on Tuesday at its Los Angeles office, top TikTok officials described a data security plan, dubbed “Project Texas” due to its reliance on Austin-based software company Oracle.

While national security was expected to be the primary focus of the hearing, multiple lawmakers also highlighted concerns about TikTok’s impact on children.

What will China do if it comes to the US? A case study of the Indian Blockade of TikTok and possible consequences for its app development

Apple has a lot to lose in relation to its relations with both the US and China. Cook has a lot of success at Apple due to his ability to maintain working relationships with the Chinese government and manufacturers.

Some observers expect Washington to take action. “We will see limitations this year,” says Mira Ricardel, a former White House deputy national security adviser now at the Chertoff Group advising businesses on regulations. “There is a unanimity of view that will lead to doing something.” Here is what that something may look like.

India’s blockade of Tik Tok is difficult to break. A few small ISPs permit access, according to NetBlocks. And Ram Sundara Raman, lead developer for the University of Michigan’s Censored Planet project, says he was able to watch videos during a visit to India using the app he had downloaded in the US. But the ban has forced many Indian users to turn toward rival services, including from Google and Facebook, and has caused turmoil for influencers who built businesses on TikTok.

Trump’s order would have immediately prohibited app stores from distributing TikTok, and nearly two months later would have barred cloud providers and internet infrastructure services from doing business with the company. People or companies caught dodging the order could have faced fines or prison sentences. “We wanted to start at the root, where it comes into the US, and extract it that way,” says Ivan Kanapathy, who was China director for Trump’s National Security Council and is now vice president at policy consultancy Beacon Global Strategies.

The company recently launched a charm offensive that included rapid-fire meetings with the CEO of TikTok in Washington, a first-ever tour of its corporate campus in Los Angeles and new transparency tools on the app.

Adam Segal is an expert on Chinese technology policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said that it’s to show a certain amount of strength to China.

The U.S. Data Security Plan for the TikTok App and a Deal with China’s Trade Violation Laws

“That’s almost half the US coming to TikTok to connect, to create, to share, to learn, or just to have some fun,” said Chew, wearing in a hoodie and t-shirt like any other American tech executive in the clip. This is a big moment for us. Some politicians are thinking about banning TikTok and it might take away some of the appeal of it.

Now, all US user traffic is routed throughOracle’s server, according to the officials from TikTok, who explained how the powerful algorithm that determines how videos go viral will be inspected. In addition, a third party monitor will inspect TikTok’s data and algorithm in case Oracle misses anything.

The people that the USDS is expected to hire have gone through high level background checks similar to those used by the U.S. government, officials said on Tuesday. None of the people hired would be from China.

Still, aggregate data, like what kind of content is trending on the app or in what regions certain kind of videos are popular, can be analyzed by corporate employees in Beijing who would need to be granted special permission from the U.S. data security team.

Jim Lewis, a security expert at the Center forStrategic and International Studies, said that although the plan is addressing many major security concerns it isn’t certain it will be approved.

Lewis said that the Oracle plan would work. “This kind of thing is pretty standard. A reasonable solution might not be enough since TikTok is so emotional.

A sale would face significant challenges, starting with a steep price tag that few tech firms could afford. It is thought to be worth tens of billions of dollars. There are likely to be legal challenges if a forced divestiture were to happen. The Council on Foreign Relations has said selling TikTok could constitute a violation of China’s export control laws.

Project Texas, a Data Security Project, was formally announced Tuesday at the Pinellas Collaborative Committee on Communications and Privacy Rights (COP21)

Assuming the deal passes muster, though, Segal agreed that it resolves the bulk of the data security concerns by allowing inspections of its algorithm and transferring U.S. user data to Oracle.

Project Texas has many details that have appeared in newspapers, but Tuesday’s gathering was the first time the company gave an official update on the plan.

On Tuesday, TikTok officials led journalists through its Transparency and Accountability Center, which felt something like an interactive public relations museum.

Then there was a game of sorts that put people in the position of a TikTok content moderator, where they decided if a video violated TikTok’s rules or not.

Visitors who sign non-disclosure agreements will be given the option of looking at TikTok’s entire source code in server rooms, which is not open to journalists.

The content moderation game has brought home how difficult it is for a lot of people who have to make tradeoffs every day on videos, but it is much bigger than that, says a tech journalist.

The TikToks hope that Congress can take a more deliberative approach to the issues as a result of sharing the details of their comprehensive plans with the full Committee.

“If you’re certainly willing to fly a balloon over your continental airspace—and have people see it with a naked eye—what would make you not weaponize data? MarcoRubio, a Republican from Florida, wants to use the app on the phone of 60 million Americans to influence political debate in this country.

Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota says that they are trying to gather as much data as possible and even the most minuscule items can add up to more data. There is a big amount of data that will never be used, but the small pieces add up. They are working it. They are patient. They see us as a threat, and they are collecting data.

The senator from Colorado told congressional reporters last week that none of the suggestions were relevant to his concerns.

U.S. Sen. Paul Nakasone and the Defense of Trade Facilitation in the Presence of a Strange Country: Implications for the US and China

“It’s not only the fact that you can influence something, but you can also turn off the message as well when you have such a large population of listeners,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Our status is being debated in public in a way that avoids the facts of the agreement and what has already been achieved. We will continue to do our part to deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people,” Brooke Oberwetter from TikTok said in statement.

A bipartisan bill that would authorize the Secretary of Commerce to investigate and ban the use of technologies from countries that are not friendly was introduced earlier this month by Warner. At least 18 senators spanning both parties and the Biden administration have come out in support of the bill.

The US wants to ban products from Chinese technology giantHuawei, but officials often don’t have too many details when asked to show proof of a connection with the Chinese government.

“People are always looking for the smoking gun in these technologies,” NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce told reporters in December. “I characterize it much more as a loaded gun.”

The Real Story of Bankruptcy: A Story About Social Media and Foreign Influence on US Markets and Politics – A Conversation with Senator Mark Warner

It was only after the financial crisis that the Senate voted to roll back some of the regulations for mid-size banks. The Dodd-Frank rules were put in place to prevent a repeat of the rolling disasters of 2009, which were caused by too much capital being kept in reserve. He thought that they were too much. But he admits he’d never seen a bank run start on Twitter.

Silicon Valley Bank became clear that it had made a bad bet on the long-dated government debt that meant it could not afford to pay back all of its deposits. Many of its customers were venture capitalists and tech company founders, some of whom spread news (and speculation) on WhatsApp, Slack and social media, driving a panic some analysts and lawmakers think helped accelerate the bank’s demise.

As he walked on to the Senate floor, Kaine said his voice was going to drop as he didn’t want anyone at the Capitol to hear him. I am nervous.

Banking regulators have been aware of social media’s potential to drive wild movements in public markets since 2021, when shares in Gamestop, a video game retailer, shot from $20 to $483 over a two-week period, before plummeting back down. The Securities and Exchange Commission blamed investment forums on Reddit for fueling the episode.

The Intelligence Committee has received a number of briefings on the potential for manipulating US markets with deepfakes.

“These tools are very, very powerful,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Verge on Wednesday, describing how social media can be used to enable foreign influence operations. I am not saying that they are doing it right now. But why would we wait until President Xi and China says, ‘I’m ready to pull the trigger and invade Taiwan’?”

Is time up for TikTok? The ten-year campaign to bolster the US reputation for fentanyl and spy balloons

TikTok has fewer American employees than the 10,000 it targeted for in 2020, but it has more US employees than that year.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul has called TikTok a “spy balloon in your phone,” and fellow Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher has called TikTok “digital fentanyl.”

The broadening concerns about China’s massive intelligence capabilities are an increasingly frequent topic in Washington – especially in relation to the spy balloon drama and TikTok, and they were also due to spill over into talks on Friday between Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa.

As a growing number of lawmakers raise national security concerns about TikTok’s ties to China, and some experts worry about the app’s impact on young people’s mental health, CNN is hosting a special to dig into these issues. CNN Primetime: Is time up for TikTok? Thursday, March 23 at 9 pm.

At a Harvard Business Review conference where executives, professors and artists appeared for talks on corporate leadership and emotional intelligence, Shou Chew attempted to save his company.

The social network TikTok is in the middle of a larger campaign to bolster its US reputation and remind voters how important it is to American culture.

A press conference is planned for Wednesday with dozens of social media creators on the steps of the Capitol, some of whom have been flown out there by TikTok. The company is paying for a blitz of advertisements for a Beltway audience. And last week it put out a docuseries highlighting American small business owners who rely on the platform for their livelihoods.

TikTok and the Chinese: Why Do We Need China? Why Do Some Social Media Companies Want to Stop Scrolling? How Do They Stand Up? And Why Does Beijing Distinguish?

Chew insisted that his company was independent and not an arm of the Chinese government or the Communist Party. But despite not producing evidence or any proof to support their claims of potential interference from Beijing, the lawmakers said they didn’t believe him.

TikTok recently set a default one-hour daily screen time limit on every account for users under 18 in one of the most aggressive moves yet by a social media company to prevent teens from endlessly scrolling. It rolled out a feature that aimed to offer more information to users about why its powerful algorithm recommends certain videos. The company pledged to give more information to researchers.

The series spotlighted inspiring stories of American small business owners and creators. The first of the 60-second clips features a Mississippi soap maker with a deep Southern accent who built her company on the app, and the second features an educator who quit his job to focus on sharing informational videos on TikTok aimed at teaching toddlers how to read.

A disabled Asian American creator using her platform to fight ableism, a small business owner from South Carolina who uses TikTok to start her own business, and an Ohio chef who builds his bakery business using the app are expected to attend. It is possible that the creators have many millions of followers on TikTok.

Sherman is skeptical about how effective the PR push will be, because of the way divided Washington is right now.

Lindsay is a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, and she said that TikTok’s lobbying efforts have been pretty ineffective.

The China-ByteDance problem is well-posed for the future: An economics professor tells Xinhua that the Chinese government is not ready to shut down the Internet

The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China believes there is more awareness of the problem because it has gotten more attention.

TheCyberspace Administration, which is the internet regulators that reports to PresidentXi Jinping, required internet companies to register their recommendation methods with it.

Beijing will probably not accept a deal to remove the TikTok algorithm from its control, he said.

TikTok’s algorithms, which keep users glued to the app, are believed to be key to its success. The algorithms give recommendations based on users’ behavior, thus pushing videos they actually like and want to watch.

The professor of business and economics at the University of International Business and Economics was quoted in Chinese state media as saying that ByteDance would need a license from Beijing to sell its technology.

“Some cutting-edge technologies might impact national security and public welfare, and need to be included in [export control] management,” Cui Fan told Xinhua.

A senior official from the Chinese regulator of digital and traditional media visited Bytedance’s offices last week. He urged the company to improve the use of “recommendation algorithms” to spread “positive energy” and strengthen the review of online content, according to a statement from the regulator posted on its website.

In April 2021, a Chinese government entity acquired a “golden share” of 1% in a Beijing subsidiary of ByteDance, according to business data platform Qichacha. The subsidiary controls operating licenses for Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China, and Toutiao, a news aggregation app.

Vivian Chew: Managing Director of TikTok, an innovation platform for short-form video content creation and consumption applications in the U.S.

At the beginning of 2023, rules governing “deep synthesis algorithms” also took effect. They will restrict the use of software that is powered by technology. Popular apps are underpinned by such technologies.

He said a change of ownership didn’t solve anything. The issue of data security is more about who has access to that data, regardless of legal ownership.

The true test, he said, is whether user data can be effectively ring-fenced and privacy and security can be achieved through data segregation, encryption and other means.

Both sides will try to reach a compromise where the US concerns are addressed, but Beijing still has control over TikTok.

When TikTok was the title sponsor last summer for Vidcon, an annual convention for the creators and brands that make up a key part of the short-form video app’s audience and business, it was Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas who got on stage for the industry keynote event.

He added that ByteDance is very organized, with global investors and a board of shareholder and employee representatives. I am responsible for the decisions that are made at TikTok, but I also have to be responsible to the board and the shareholders as well, according to Chew.

He was the CEO at TikTok for just three months. The interim global head of TikTok was an Australian, who worked at other big US tech platforms such as Google’sYouTube.

How Chinese Tech Meets Washington: A Brief History of Digital Snoop Dogs in the US and the Challenges It Entails for China

Ivan Kanapathy, a former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia on the White House’s National Security Council staff and currently senior associate, said that Singapore was brought in specifically because he is not a Chinese national. “And they’re quite good at it, geopolitically.”

After his service in Singapore, he went to university in London and graduated with a degree from the Harvard Business School. He was exposed to Silicon Valley while at Harvard, after he interned one summer at a “startup” that “was called Facebook,” as he put it in an alumni spotlight.

It can be a break from the US tech execs who cant seem to stay on top of things on social media. Matthew Quint, director of the center on global brand leadership at the Columbia Business School, said that cultural differences can stem from leading a massive tech company with a Chinese parent company. Chinese technology companies and leaders have faced strict government regulations because they drew too much attention to themselves.

The hearing went on for more than five hours and began with calls to ban the app in the US. It offered a vivid display of the bipartisan push to crack down on the popular short-form video app and the company’s uphill battle to improve relations with Washington.

The chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee told the audience that their platform should be banned.

Reply to “Comments on ‘What Happened to Tik Tokamak’” by Chew and Crdenas

Lawmakers wanted clear answers to questions about Chinese authority over the company, which was what Chew needed to provide. Adding confusion at times resulted from his answers on Communist Party of China questions.

“I have looked in — and I have seen no evidence of this happening,” Chew responded. The company we’re working for is American and will be responsible for storing their data on American soil. So the risk would be similar to any government going to an American company, asking for data.”

“We are committed to be very transparent with our users about what we collect,” Chew said. “I don’t believe what we collect is more than most players in the industry.”

Citing examples of harmful content served to children, he said, “it is unacceptable, sir, that even after knowing all these dangers, you still claim that TikTok is something grand to behold.”

Rep. Bob Latta, a Republican from Ohio, accused TikTok of promoting a video on the so-called “blackout challenge” or choking challenge to the feed of a 10-year-old girl from Pennsylvania, who later died after trying to mimic the challenge in the video.

There isn’t enough moderation in the way of content that promotes self harm, which leaves room for kids to be exposed to it.

A California Democrat, Tony Crdenas, compared Chew to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has also frustrated some members of Congress, after he blasted what he perceived to be Chew’s indirect responses.

“You have been one of the few people to unite this committee,” Cárdenas told Chew. “You remind me a lot of Mark Zuckerberg. When he came here, I said to my staff, ‘He reminds me of Fred Astaire — good dancer with words.’ And you are doing the same today. A lot of your answers are a bit vague.

The 40-year-old Harvard-educated Chew was never going to receive a warm welcome from US lawmakers. That much had been telegraphed ahead of Thursday’s hearing in the clearest possible manner. And Chew was well aware he would likely be greeted with a cold reception, which is why he spent hours and hours preparing over the last week for his first sworn testimony before US lawmakers.

What do we learn from the most bipartisan committee in Congress? Rep. Kat Cammack’s moment at a high-energy hearing of TikTok

Thursday was a time when the hearing felt like a moment following Rep. Kat Cammack’s critique of TikTok.

Data security risks include giving a foreign person or government access to troves of Americans’ sensitive personal data as well as access to intellectual property, source code or other potentially sensitive information, a Department spokesman said. On a case by case basis,CFIUS will ensure protection of national security, including to prevent misuse of data through espionage, tracking, and other means that threaten national security.

Some of the risks are hypothetical and theoretical according to Chew. I have not seen any evidence. I’m eagerly awaiting the time when we can talk about evidence and address concerns that are being raised.

That’s the question coursing through the halls of Congress, Wall Street, and the public writ large after the social media company’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, waffled for hours before US lawmakers on Thursday.

It was striking how the TikTok chief was able to unify the parties under questioning from both Republicans and Democrats. “Mr. Chew, welcome to the most bipartisan committee in Congress,” Republican Rep. Buddy Carter said. Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas echoed, “You have been one of the few members to unite this committee.”

Quite a few members of Congress were not interested in the facts. They were never going to listen to anything Chew said. They were going to use their talking points during their allotted time, as cameras were rolling. They couldn’t care less about technical talk related to routing server traffic through Oracle. It was never going to matter or impact how they behaved.

There was a pageant of political performance in the hearing, as lawmakers from both parties relished a chance to show who could be tough on China. TikTok issued a statement bemoaning a day “dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already underway through Project Texas or productively address industry-wide issues of youth safety.”

Alex Stamos: Managing the State and Laws of Digital Democracy and Cybersecurity in the Light of China’s First Military Indictment

Alex Stamos is a founding partner with the Krebs Stamos Group as well as the founder and director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Prior to launching KSG and the SIO, Alex served as the chief security officer of Facebook and as the chief information security officer at Yahoo. The views he has are of his own. You can read more on CNN.

We are clearly at the start of a long struggle between the world’s democracies and a new coalition of autocracies, led by a Chinese Communist Party that is emerging from the Covid-19 crisis with its most autocratic leader since Mao Zedong and a burning desire to demonstrate the power of the People’s Republic domestically and abroad.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit this week to a battered, beleaguered Vladimir Putin only highlighted its new role, as the Chinese leader publicly legitimized a Russian president who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes only last week. In the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and disputed Japanese waters, China’s rapidly growing military continues to push boundaries and prepare for conflicts with its neighbors and the West.

A similar battle plays out online, as China’s numerous intelligence and information warfare units support the country’s long-term economic and strategic goals. Constantly attacking to gain access to the West’s key companies, as well as rapidly improving it ability to shape the world’s narratives through both overt and covert means, is included.

Congress must pass a comprehensive privacy law. With state privacy laws popping up across the US and creating chaos for companies without addressing some fundamental issues, now is the time for Congress and President Biden to take back leadership in tech regulation. In doing so, Congress is able to clearly define the types of critical data that can be kept in the US, in our allies in democracy, in neutral countries and in our adversaries.

Civil society and academic researchers have access to the transparency social networks give to them when it comes to public content. These groups work with American social media companies to find and assess campaigns to manipulate American and global politics in a way that is helpful to citizens and journalists of the kinds of campaigns that may target them.

TikTok has traditionally made it difficult for researchers to monitor its platform for this kind of manipulation, although in the past several months it has started to address the need for transparency. US companies are usually more transparent than TikTok because of their own voluntary decisions. A plan to eliminate external access to find and promote influence campaigns has been announced by the long reigning leader in transparency. The Platform Accountability and transparency act would remove the national security issue from the hands of individual tech billionaires and create a fair baseline for all companies.

The US and our allies also need to seriously engage in the information war, both by protecting and supporting journalists who are able to operate independently of any government, and by building civil society coalitions that create public resiliency against the Chinese-style censorship that is invading countries such as India and Turkey.

Because of the immediate risks that can be posed by a single piece of TikTok, Washington needs to plan for the next 20 moves, and see the whole board in order to do so. The history of the 20th century depends on it.

The U.S. Capitol is Not a Threat to China: State-of-the-art Investigation of TikTok and Citizen Lab

The laws in question are so broad, legal experts say they do not know what intelligence work means.

In a rare moment of frustration, Chew told legislators that the same thing was being said by TikTok and Citizen Lab. He said he was trying to prove a negative for the last four hours.

TikTok has faced claims that its in-app browser could be a security risk by tracking users’ keyboardentries, known as keylogging. Felix Krause, the privacy researcher who performed the analysis last year, stated that keylogging is not an inherently malicious activity but it could theoretically mean TikTok could collect passwords, credit card information or other sensitive data that users may submit to websites when they visit them.

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a former head of security at the social network, said they have to trust the companies they gave information to do the right thing. “We probably shouldn’t. And this comes down to a concern about the ultimate governance of these companies.”

Lin told CNN that TikTok and other social media companies’ appetite for data highlights policy failures to pass strong privacy laws that regulate the tech industry writ large.

A five hour grilling of the CEO of TikTok underscored how China is being viewed as an ideological challenge rather than as a threat to US security and economic dominance, much as the Soviet Union was.

The hearing was the latest in a recent sequence of events that have made the long predicted clash between the existing superpower, the United States, and the rising one, China, a tangible reality for millions of Americans.

The hostility of some of the lawmakers illustrated how opposition to China has become one of the dominant organizing principles of Washington politics and a rare issue that unites both parties. The disrespect shown to Chew and the tone of the questions made some Asian American groups fearful that fierce hostility toward Beijing in Washington could result in more intimidation and violence against Asian Americans.

“Number two, this is a powerful propaganda machine if it’s used that way. This is an incredible misinformation, disinformation machine. I’m not saying they’re doing it right now, but that potential, if President Xi in China wants to somehow invade … Taiwan, and suddenly folks not only in America but around the world are starting to see videos that reinforces that kind of message, that is a propaganda tool that makes every other possibility pale.”

He diligently opened his packet of notes while he sat on the Energy and Commerce Committee. The lawmakers were getting ready to question him, and there appeared to be a sheet of names and faces that had already made up their minds.

Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the FTC: Why social media is so popular that Facebook does not share data with outside parties in a democratic society

In Cambridge Analytica’s case, Facebook settled with the Federal Trade Commission for $5 billion. The scandal kickstarted legislative debate over a federal data privacy network. Congress hasn’t approved any meaningful data protection for US or foreign-owned social media companies.