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.
Ama Adams, a managing partner and CFIUS expert at Ropes & Gray, said that some of the government powers in the draft agreement were somewhat typical — including the right to inspect a company’s facilities and materials, and the use of a third-party monitor.
Yep.
But “setting up a structure that has allegiance to the United States — I’ve never seen language, per se, to that extent.”
Fair enough, but this only came about because Tiktok clearly has allegiance to a conflicting foreign power. Facebook and Google aren’t required to have allegiance to the United States because they’re allowed to do their own thing, because they seem like they’re doing their own thing and that’s fine under our system. This is like saying “No one else has to go on house arrest; it’s unfair to single me out like this” after you robbed a liquor store.
These provisions seem designed to address fears — expressed by the Biden Administration, the Trump Administration, and legislators in both parties — that TikTok’s foreign ownership and control threaten U.S. national security.
Incorrect. This is designed to address “fears” that Tiktok functions explicitly as a surveillance tool for the Chinese government. It is required to do so by Chinese law, and contains features which are highly unusual which appear designed to spy on its users. That’s above and beyond even the extremely invasive data-collection which most other social media apps also do (scanning your contacts, doing facial recognition on you, listening to your microphone, etc). I think it’s fair to say that gathering that level of data on millions of individual people and then handing the information to the Chinese government on demand is a unique and dangerous capability which should be addressed in some fashion.
There actually are technologies (e.g. routers) where simply the “ownership and control” is an issue, and maybe those should be treated as a bigger deal than they are, but that’s not this.
That would raise serious concerns about the government’s ability to censor or distort what people are saying or watching on TikTok.
Bro, you are lying. Again, they’re actually fine with doing that in some other platforms, which I don’t agree with either, but that very clearly isn’t this. Forbes is only saying that this is the issue to try to distort the facts in order to oppose putting Tiktok under this kind of control. Why Forbes is lying in this specific manner I have no idea, but I’m genuinely very curious why they are.
Why are you reacting this way to laws which seem very specifically aimed at curbing (or attempting to curb) the use of Tiktok for Chinese surveillance? If the US government was demanding that Tiktok install a keylogger and provide the data to it, that would justify what you’re saying. But, as I keep repeatedly saying with sourcing, it’s the opposite. Do you have an argument for why this represents any kind of US surveillance, beyond just repeating the assertion?
Edit: Let me ask in a little more distilled form. Why, if the US government wanted to use Tiktok for surveillance, would they keep attempting to ban it from various classes of people’s phones, and keep talking about banning it from everybody’s? That seems counterproductive to the surveillance mission, no?
The US has consensual access to pretty much every major player in the social media marketplace (as we know from the Snowden leaks)… Except TikTok.
Until TikTok opens itself up to US surveillance, they should be banning it to push users towards platforms that the US does have access to. Watch them roll back the bans if these policies actually get implemented.
The US has consensual access to pretty much every major player in the social media marketplace
I believe this to be true, yes. (It’s acknowledged that they have access through subpeonas, and personally I think they have active spy operations in pretty much every major internet community including Tiktok. They have active spy operations in actively hostile foreign governments, and compared to that, getting clandestine access to a large internet community is child’s play.)
(as we know from the Snowden leaks)
What part of the Snowden leaks? The big things I’m aware of Snowden revealing were massive efforts to capture and store phone and backbone raw-packet data, partial compromise of TLS, and another massive effort at compromising email. Then there were some other more minor specifically targeted things, but I didn’t see any social media in those. Can you send me a source on this?
Until TikTok opens itself up to US surveillance
I think I spent a pretty good length of time documentation and explaining why I think that these rules do not represent opening up Tiktok to US surveillance. Y’all keep repeating that these new rules represent opening up Tiktok to US surveillance, and then riffing on from there the further conclusions. If you want to talk to me about this, can you back it up a little and say why you think these specific rules represent surveillance?
E.g. the NSA (according to rumor) installed their hardware decades ago at some AT&T backbone sites, with consent of AT&T. When Verizon later became a major player, they tapped into major Verizon backbones, without the consent of Verizon (as was leaked by Snowden.) Both of those are surveillance. What they didn’t do was get involved in AT&T’s terms of service, ask for the right to veto hiring certain executives, conduct audits and assessments of AT&T’s operations… because that’s unnecessary if what you want to do is surveillance. You just surveil. Why, then, are you saying that when the US wants to do those things to Tiktok, that represents some kind of surveillance?
Literally the entire PRISM operation? It gathered internet traffic from all major US tech companies and could pretty much access any data those companies had on you.
The US can’t really force a foreign entity to comply, so this is the next best thing. If anything, it means that TikTok’s systems are so robust that US alphabet agencies haven’t found an easy way in yet.
Literally the entire PRISM operation? It gathered internet traffic from all major US tech companies and could pretty much access any data those companies had on you.
So, I just looked this up. I honestly had some of the details of it wrong in my memory (I remembered it as pretty much only backbone packet eavesdropping, with FISA warrants for a company’s internal data as a separate thing, but Snowden describes those two things as working hand in hand under PRISM which I guess makes sense.)
Are you saying that TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. is currently exempt from FISA warrants? If a FISA court issues a legally binding request to USDS for internal data, USDS tells them to get lost? If that’s what you’re saying, which part of these proposed regulations is going to change that?
That’s what keeps blowing my mind about this – the US loves doing surveillance on people’s internet stuff, I’ll agree with you 100% on that, and that that’s in general a bad thing. But, as far as I can tell, opposing these particular regulations because you’re opposed to the US doing that genuinely just makes no sense.
If you said that Project Texas was a cover for US surveillance, that would actually make some sense, since that was what put US Tiktok operations physically and corporate-structure-wise more within the US hence subject to US courts and physical spying. But that already happened. Forbes is writing this article pretending that now that they’ve seen the new regulations, they’re a shocking overreach expanding US surveillance, and I honestly just don’t see anything in the new regulations that would justify that statement.
Let me ask something else: Are all these countries also singling out Tiktok for this same type of treatment out of this same desire to surveil Tiktok users?
None of those countries have negotiated with TikTok for a plan of operations: they’ve been following guidelines shared by US intelligence… Are you at all surprised by their behaviour?
Are you saying that TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. is currently exempt from FISA warrants? If a FISA court issues a legally binding request to USDS for internal data, USDS tells them to get lost? If that’s what you’re saying, which part of these proposed regulations is going to change that?
It’s gotten to the point where if I see a story in Forbes, I just automatically assume that the reality is the opposite.
The US government has claimed for itself the authority to eavesdrop on any and all internet communication inside the United States, alter the plotlines of TV and movies, and (if you accept that Trump can speak for the US government) pull the FCC licenses of news networks that report news the president doesn’t like. Nothing in what’s proposed on Tiktok comes close to any of that along any of those axes; it’s factually wrong to say it’s “unprecedented.” I actually don’t agree with any of those things, but putting what they now want to do in Tiktok beyond any of those categories of behavior is a gross exaggeration.
Yep.
Fair enough, but this only came about because Tiktok clearly has allegiance to a conflicting foreign power. Facebook and Google aren’t required to have allegiance to the United States because they’re allowed to do their own thing, because they seem like they’re doing their own thing and that’s fine under our system. This is like saying “No one else has to go on house arrest; it’s unfair to single me out like this” after you robbed a liquor store.
Incorrect. This is designed to address “fears” that Tiktok functions explicitly as a surveillance tool for the Chinese government. It is required to do so by Chinese law, and contains features which are highly unusual which appear designed to spy on its users. That’s above and beyond even the extremely invasive data-collection which most other social media apps also do (scanning your contacts, doing facial recognition on you, listening to your microphone, etc). I think it’s fair to say that gathering that level of data on millions of individual people and then handing the information to the Chinese government on demand is a unique and dangerous capability which should be addressed in some fashion.
There actually are technologies (e.g. routers) where simply the “ownership and control” is an issue, and maybe those should be treated as a bigger deal than they are, but that’s not this.
Bro, you are lying. Again, they’re actually fine with doing that in some other platforms, which I don’t agree with either, but that very clearly isn’t this. Forbes is only saying that this is the issue to try to distort the facts in order to oppose putting Tiktok under this kind of control. Why Forbes is lying in this specific manner I have no idea, but I’m genuinely very curious why they are.
Etc. etc.
So… Now Tiktok gets to be a surveillance tool for the US government like every other major social media? Wonderful.
Why are you reacting this way to laws which seem very specifically aimed at curbing (or attempting to curb) the use of Tiktok for Chinese surveillance? If the US government was demanding that Tiktok install a keylogger and provide the data to it, that would justify what you’re saying. But, as I keep repeatedly saying with sourcing, it’s the opposite. Do you have an argument for why this represents any kind of US surveillance, beyond just repeating the assertion?
Edit: Let me ask in a little more distilled form. Why, if the US government wanted to use Tiktok for surveillance, would they keep attempting to ban it from various classes of people’s phones, and keep talking about banning it from everybody’s? That seems counterproductive to the surveillance mission, no?
The US has consensual access to pretty much every major player in the social media marketplace (as we know from the Snowden leaks)… Except TikTok.
Until TikTok opens itself up to US surveillance, they should be banning it to push users towards platforms that the US does have access to. Watch them roll back the bans if these policies actually get implemented.
I believe this to be true, yes. (It’s acknowledged that they have access through subpeonas, and personally I think they have active spy operations in pretty much every major internet community including Tiktok. They have active spy operations in actively hostile foreign governments, and compared to that, getting clandestine access to a large internet community is child’s play.)
What part of the Snowden leaks? The big things I’m aware of Snowden revealing were massive efforts to capture and store phone and backbone raw-packet data, partial compromise of TLS, and another massive effort at compromising email. Then there were some other more minor specifically targeted things, but I didn’t see any social media in those. Can you send me a source on this?
I think I spent a pretty good length of time documentation and explaining why I think that these rules do not represent opening up Tiktok to US surveillance. Y’all keep repeating that these new rules represent opening up Tiktok to US surveillance, and then riffing on from there the further conclusions. If you want to talk to me about this, can you back it up a little and say why you think these specific rules represent surveillance?
E.g. the NSA (according to rumor) installed their hardware decades ago at some AT&T backbone sites, with consent of AT&T. When Verizon later became a major player, they tapped into major Verizon backbones, without the consent of Verizon (as was leaked by Snowden.) Both of those are surveillance. What they didn’t do was get involved in AT&T’s terms of service, ask for the right to veto hiring certain executives, conduct audits and assessments of AT&T’s operations… because that’s unnecessary if what you want to do is surveillance. You just surveil. Why, then, are you saying that when the US wants to do those things to Tiktok, that represents some kind of surveillance?
Literally the entire PRISM operation? It gathered internet traffic from all major US tech companies and could pretty much access any data those companies had on you.
The US can’t really force a foreign entity to comply, so this is the next best thing. If anything, it means that TikTok’s systems are so robust that US alphabet agencies haven’t found an easy way in yet.
So, I just looked this up. I honestly had some of the details of it wrong in my memory (I remembered it as pretty much only backbone packet eavesdropping, with FISA warrants for a company’s internal data as a separate thing, but Snowden describes those two things as working hand in hand under PRISM which I guess makes sense.)
Are you saying that TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. is currently exempt from FISA warrants? If a FISA court issues a legally binding request to USDS for internal data, USDS tells them to get lost? If that’s what you’re saying, which part of these proposed regulations is going to change that?
That’s what keeps blowing my mind about this – the US loves doing surveillance on people’s internet stuff, I’ll agree with you 100% on that, and that that’s in general a bad thing. But, as far as I can tell, opposing these particular regulations because you’re opposed to the US doing that genuinely just makes no sense.
If you said that Project Texas was a cover for US surveillance, that would actually make some sense, since that was what put US Tiktok operations physically and corporate-structure-wise more within the US hence subject to US courts and physical spying. But that already happened. Forbes is writing this article pretending that now that they’ve seen the new regulations, they’re a shocking overreach expanding US surveillance, and I honestly just don’t see anything in the new regulations that would justify that statement.
Let me ask something else: Are all these countries also singling out Tiktok for this same type of treatment out of this same desire to surveil Tiktok users?
None of those countries have negotiated with TikTok for a plan of operations: they’ve been following guidelines shared by US intelligence… Are you at all surprised by their behaviour?
Are you saying that TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. is currently exempt from FISA warrants? If a FISA court issues a legally binding request to USDS for internal data, USDS tells them to get lost? If that’s what you’re saying, which part of these proposed regulations is going to change that?