Our Growing TikTok Moral Panic Still Isn’t Addressing The Actual Problem
from the moral-panics-are-just-so-hot-right-now dept
The Biden administration has given all federal agencies 30 days to ensure staffers do not have TikTok on any federal devices. All agency vendors are to adhere to the same rules within 90 days. It’s the latest evolution in a growing planetary moral panic that’s gotten well out ahead of its skis, resulting in often-performative solutions that don’t fix the actual problem.
The Biden administration memo comes at the same time as EU announced it would be banning all diplomats from having TikTok on their professional devices, with the UK being pressured to follow suit. Those responses come in the wake of numerous performative announcements that the app has been banned by numerous states and state-funded colleges.
Banning a Chinese-owned app from government employee devices isn’t a bad idea. The problem remains, as we’ve noted countless times, that this isn’t actually fixing the underlying issue. Namely, our repeated failures on consumer protection, our failure to meaningful regulate the unaccountable data broker market, and our corruption-fueled failure to pass even basic privacy legislation for the internet era.
To hear the TikTok hyperbolics tell it, they’re taking meaningful steps to protect consumer privacy and national security:
“The Biden-Harris Administration has invested heavily in defending our nation’s digital infrastructure and curbing foreign adversaries’ access to Americans’ data,” Chris DeRusha, federal chief information security officer, said. “This guidance is part of the Administration’s ongoing commitment to securing our digital infrastructure and protecting the American people’s security and privacy.”
This may surprise some folks, but you’re not actually protecting the American people’s security and privacy by hyperventilating about a single app.
Yes, TikTok plays fast and loose with consumer data. So does nearly every other foreign and domestic app and service on your phone, from apps that track and monetize your every waking movement in granular detail, to apps and services that casually traffic in your mental health specifics. And that’s before you get to the telecom industry, which has pioneered irresponsible collection and monetization of user info.
All of this data is fed into a massive and intentionally confusing data broker market that regulators have been generally disinterested in seriously policing, lest U.S. companies (gasp) lose money. We don’t want to pass a modern internet privacy law, or be tough on data brokers, app makers, OEMs, or telecoms, because rampant surveillance and data monetization is simply too lucrative.
There’s a lot of sound and fury being generated to distract everyone from that fact.
There are two general problems cited when it comes to TikTok. The first being that the data TikTok collects can be abused by the Chinese government. But here’s the thing: it’s trivially easy for Chinese, Iranian, Russian, or any other government intelligence to buy this same (and more!) data for very little money from the data broker industry we’ve routinely failed to meaningfully regulate.
The other claimed problem is that the Chinese government will use TikTok to fill U.S. kids heads with gibberish and propaganda. But not only is there no evidence that’s actually happening at scale, it’s a rich concern coming from a country so inundated in authoritarian propaganda (across AM Radio, Fox, Sinclair and the Internet) that residents increasingly engage in widespread domestic terrorism.
The U.S. made a very specific, very clear policy choice decades ago to prioritize wealth accumulation over consumer privacy, national security, and market health. The same policymakers freaking out about TikTok created the very regulatory environment TikTok exploits. And they don’t want to actually fix it because they don’t want to lose money (or have to do things like obtain pesky warrants).
So what we get instead is a big, dumb, performance.
But the problem isn’t exclusively TikTok. The problem is greed, corruption, and our multi-decade failures on consumer protection, privacy legislation, and corporate accountability. All protected by an increasingly lopsided court system specifically being cultivated to erode this sagging accountability even further.
Banning TikTok is like running into a burning house, dumping a cupful of water on a burning couch, then standing idly in the swirling smoke with a dumb look on your face insisting you’ve fixed the problem and that all worried house residents can go back to sleep.
Filed Under: ban tiktok, biden, china, chinese, national security, privacy, social media, surveillance, tiktok bans
Companies: tiktok
Comments on “Our Growing TikTok Moral Panic Still Isn’t Addressing The Actual Problem”
Competition.
Why should the US government allow the Chinese government to have unfettered access to the treasure trove of data that can be scraped by a free Chinese app when they should be buying that data from U.S. based corporations like everyone else? This really should be filed in the same category as the NetFlix password crackdown.
The government has an obligation to control how the equipment they purchase is used.
Not saying their tik tok stance is correct, but it is their responsibility, no?
Do people install tik tok on the equipment provided by government? This can get you terminated rather quickly.
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Generally, the software on a government supplied device is controlled by the government, and the user should not be able to install their own software, so this is a lot of performance noise that does not make any significant changes to the software on government devices.
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AC, you’re correct insofar as you’ve gone, but….
Just like trying to keep kids from watching pr0n, the fact is that if an employee wants a certain app on his/her employer-issued phone, then he’ll find a way to make it happen. Call them hackers of a low degree if you must, but nonetheless they can find ways to make it happen.
And part of the problem is, the phone makers are caught between two worlds – give the actual user (and presumptive owner) the highest possible degree of privacy, meaning that if an employer owns the device, they can’t lock it down sufficiently to ensure the user follows company policy; or give the potential owner’s IT department (as versus the actual user) the ability to lock it down so tight that issues like this simply can’t arise. That latter scenario would keep honest employees honest, but take my word for it, no phone can ever be unhackable, given enough motivation on the part of the hacker.
And thus, moral panic will always be a “thing”. But then again, it always has been, hasn’t it. They should go back to trying to prevent kids from viewing pr0n, at least those attempts are entertaining.
sumgai
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But if you’re installing, let’s say, Pastebin on Android on your employer-provided phone, you’re also likely breaking some little-enforced clause in your employment contract.
And contract law is way more enforceable than IT policy. And being fired is a very, very effective deterrent.
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“fact is that if an employee wants a certain app on his/her employer-issued phone, then he’ll find a way to make it happen”
Ok.
fwiw – this article addresses the US government concern about government devices issued to government employees and any subsequent installation of applications upon said devices.
In addition, it should be pointed out that corporate/business owned devices issued to corporate/business employees may also be subject of concern when said corporate/business is involved at all with government contracts (which they could lose).
As stated earlier, this seems to be theater because these sorts of policies have been in place for some time on critical/sensitive areas of government and business. Perhaps the policies have not been enforced, idk.
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I admit, I didn’t think it would be necessary to do a postscript that said “By employer, I’m also including the government. IOW, any phone not owned specifically by the actual user.” Please accept my apology for the omission.
sumgai
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Banning TikTok does not change that ability, just makes it two breaches of contract rather than one. Also all you need on the device is a web browser, and you can visit TikTok and any many porn sites. (Have phone users forgotten how to use a web browser?)
Walk And Chew Bubblegum
Then let them do that. Force them to pay the data brokers. Let them take the risk of being fed false information from a counterintelligence operation. Let them sweat over the possibility that a crackdown on the data brokers could cutoff their access at any time. If it’s trivially easy, then it will be simple to demonstrate that to the public, and generate more demand for regulation.
We should cut off the immediate threat now, and go after the data brokers next.
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So, how long has Techdirt been beating the drum against data brokers? That long, huh?
“Ban Tiktok” has gotten traction only because of the moral panic associated with it. Your “let them” philosophy doesn’t move the needle, because all of this has in fact been demonstrated, multiple times.
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It’s moving the needle in the correct direction for this one platform, which is better than moving the needle for zero platforms.
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Only because Tiktok is run by a warmongering country worse than Russia.
China’s methods of controlling all of their transnational corps and domestic industries are an affront to anyone that isn’t a Chinese toady, but that’s not the matter being discussed here.
Also, assuming you didn’t read the article or read it and disregarded everything written, moving the needle on Tiktok here does nothing.
After all, the Republicans were so on board with being Russian toadies, I’m sure them being Chinese toadies would be just fine.
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Koby, I’m going to play nice with you today, instead of hitting the Flag button.
The fact remains that TikTok has been around for long time, doing what they do, but until recently there’s been no outcry over their practices… which are effectively the same as every other app out there – grab everything possible, and figure out later where to sell it.
But the real fact remains is that we can assign a starting date for this particular moral panic. And that would be, the very date that #45 attempted to hold a rally, and several/many/a whole shit-ton of people used TikTok to swear that they’d be there – and then didn’t show up. #45 was more than just ‘miffed’, he was livid that “a million” attendees did in fact, not attend. When he found out that TikTok was a contributing factor to that fiasco, he burned a lot of calories trying to punish TikTok in various ways. You know the rest of that story, even if you occasionally try to distort (i.e. ignore) the facts.
So no, Koby, banning TikTok is a non-starter in the privacy protection game. Whether we “force” foreign countries to buy data or we give it to them freely is not the question. The question is, can we The People finally get our heads out of our collective ass, and force our law makers to get down off their high horses and make laws that meaningfully and forcefully protect the privacy of our citizenry. Because sure as shootin’, if we don’t have such laws in place, then data thieves (and that’s what every app is, a data thief) will continue to march in the same direction as they’ve been marching for 16 years. (Apple’s first iPhone was introduced in January 2007.)
sumgai
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In your fantasy, what exactly is this “threat”?
There isn’t any threat with TikTok that isn’t shared by a million other apps, a significant number of which are Chinese-made, just like the phone those apps run on.
Basically what you’re saying is, “Please daddy government, spend lots of taxpayer dollars on this performative bullshit because I don’t understand basic technology.”
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Koby has admitted that it’s China that’s the threat.
When it should have been THE TREASONOUS REPUBLICANS and WHITE SUPREMACISTS LIKE HIM.
I pointed it out previously, but it would be perfectly reasonable policy to prohibit all “entertainment” Apps on federal devices (though like most blanket policies, I suppose there could be rare exceptions). Federal devices are not for entertaining federal employees, they are for assisting them in their task (which ostensibly should be serving US citizens… hey! don’t laugh!).
If that’s not already federal policy, wtf have they being doing for the last 20+ years?
However as the article clearly says: policies that are explicitly about TikTok are… pointless. For example … what if a different Chinese company creates an “TikTok killer” App (120% of backdoors, snooping, surveillance. and NOW with 0-day delivery), now they suddenly need to update their policies? The sane thing is to address the problem, not just one of the (many) symptoms.
Why just the apps?
If they really want to limit Chinese snooping, they’d need to get rid of the cheap hardware, too. There’s a reason those TP-Link home routers and other WiFi hardware are so cheap.
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https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/10/surprise-us-cost-ripping-out-replacing-huawei-gear-jumps-18-to-56-billion/
So uh, about that…
Plenty of links to articles for you to read.
Apropos of something
I was just in DC for a meeting last week, and you could not go anywhere without seeing the charm offensive from ByteDance. They did a huge ad buy in the DC metro and airports, all areas frequented by Congresscritters and their minions. All very much in the “nothing to see here”/”all is well” vein.
If Tiktok wasn't chinese, or owned by bytedance...
This would be a different story.
Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 24-16 along party lines on Committee Chairman Michael McCaul’s Deterring America’s Adversaries (DATA) Act, a bill he rushed through the committee and which he was the only sponsor, that would carve out the Berman Amendment restrictions in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to allow the president to enact a ban on TikTok (or any Chinese app) if the administration can prove it knowingly transferred user data to the Chinese government, or if the company were found to have helped Chinese surveillance.
Democrats unanimously opposed it, because of its overbroad language that could ensnare a number of other companies (amendments aimed at narrowing its scope were shot down by Republicans) and the need for input on the matter from experts that the committee leadership didn’t bother to consider before considering such legislation.
Fight for the Future, one of the groups responsible for scuttling the SOPA/PIPA Act, started a campaign to pressure lawmakers against banning TikTok and instead passing actual data privacy legislation: the petition is at https://dontbantiktok.com/. The ACLU is also opposed to McCaul’s bill, based on the First Amendment implications (including those that could be caused by its proposed Berman Amendmen carveout).
Why is this even an issue?
Private employers forbid you from installing any unapproved 3rd party app all the time. Why would the federal government not already be doing this?
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In this era, many people have their own phone and would prefer not to be carrying 2 or more phones; so government-access (or employer) apps can be on private phones, and employer-provided phones may serve as the one personal phone. Isn’t tech wonderful.
The real question would be – why would there be the possibility of data leakage between apps? Can we see exactly what is being collected by the apps? Does the iOS or Android system need updating? Perhaps this should be the focus of these companies, not rearranging the look of icons and adding ever more complicated features. This hysteria just reminds me of the same freak-out that happened when Detroit’s precious lunch was being eaten by the Japanese in the 1980’s – yell loudly and get congress to do something rather than outcompeting the competition. Here, western hysteria comes from the fact that a Chinese software company can actually compete.
Do we really think the Chinese security apparatus has the smarts and imagination to create and dominate a world software market niche? Or are there actually smart, tech-business-savvy Chinese people too among the billion or so? What are the odds?
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” many people have their own phone and would prefer not to be carrying 2 or more phones; so government-access (or employer) apps can be on private phones, and employer-provided phones may serve as the one personal phone”
This situation may be the case with commercial side of government business arrangements, idk, but certainly not with other government business arrangements. Some employers, both government and commercial do not allow personal electronic devices of any kind on the premises.
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I’d certainly count this as “performative”. I’ve worked as a programmer at companies with this policy, and the first thing we’d do upon getting a new computer is install our own editors, browser extensions, entire operating systems, etc. Often we’d have to install extra software to just build our own software. Nobody knew what was “approved” or the process for getting things approved, and I think they’d have had serious trouble hiring people had that actually been enforced. Who’d want to work for such a strict company? It’s one reason people avoid government jobs.
The idea of “forbidding” employees from installing unapproved stuff is inherently performative, isn’t it? It implies that the employer has decided not to actually prevent them from doing it, as for example Apple has done for iPhone users. I doubt employees are jailbreaking corporate phones to get at Tiktok.
Debunking the TikTok National Security threat
Readers who want a more systematic debunking of the alleged national security threat posed by the TikTok app can find a report from Georgia Tech’s Internet Governance Project here: https://t.co/CkAAJ47KTZ
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I read that analysis a couple weeks ago, good read. Honestly, I think the IGP needs to present its findings to Congress, so some politicians can make thoughtful decisions about how to address the underlying issue (the lax regulation on data collection), rather than singling out one app because of the country of origin of its parent company. Additional research is needed, but it would be a good starting point for lawmakers who aren’t bent on railroading TikTok to go off from.
RE
The main problem is the government created a problem and then created a solution which will, shockingly, benefit the government.
The actual solution is a new human right, the right to fully own devices.
1) Make it illegal to have government or corporate backdoors in devices that are sold.
2) Force all devices to have fully open source code like Linux is
3) Guilty until proven innocent in the digital space. This will allow anyone to host websites, torrents, or join networks like TOR easily without worrying about going to jail because someone posted something illegal while they were sleeping.
4) Same but with money. People should be allowed to transact with crypto completely anon. If the government thinks a law was broken they should be the ones showing proof of it. The same way I can go buy bread with a dollar bill without showing my ID to the baker, I should be able to buy a fucking video game with my anon digital bucks.
There, now it’s super easy for people to be as safe and private as they want.
But the problem is this would make peoples’ heads explode because we went into a complete opposite direction, instead of things being illegal because it’s a crime with a victim, 99% of laws these days are there to make something illegal because it MIGHT lead to a crime with a victim, or to make the police’s work easier.
You can’t have rights when you live in a police state dystopia where it’s on you to prove you’re innocent by complying with every regulation that exists all while government spies on you because you might be a terrorist.
Question!
The problem is that the TikTok hysteria is being proclaimed to the rooftops with the implication that the app actively collects data, infects your phone with invasive spyware, harvests all your passwords, possibly reads your emails and texts and listens 24-7 to what in going on around it, and may eventually start sending out bad messages spoofing you.
In fact, nothing has shown this app does anything more than any other app… (Twitter? Instagram? Facebook?) You give it your email, you let it know your location from time to time, and it builds an interesting profile of your likes and dislikes based on use. If you contribute, it has a picture of you and people around you.
This is no different than other apps. That the Chinese government’s nefarious agencies could build a database is not disputed, but the data is there for the asking anyway, perhaps by numerous from companies (or infiltrating legitimate advertisers). The question is – having built a database of 1.4B people at home, will they also need to do the same for 400M Americans and 500M EU citizens? Sounds like a serious make-work project.
Yes, it allows them to see – your home address location (good lick if it’s a tall apartment). who is regularly in the State Department building(s) (I guess they work there?) or the Department of Energy or FBI headquarters. But of course, this data is incomplete. How many sign up with their real name, and how do you connect that? On top of that, you don’t have 100% participation, so it’s an incomplete data set. You can probably find many who work in Homeland Security just by reading their websites and the news.
If there is such a thing, it more sounds like a major pork-barrel project for the bureaucrats in the Chinese national security. After all, look how much is spent on the NSA, huge collections of tech and data processing – for what?
The little chickens who claimed that China is coming.
They can not articulate an actual problem.
Well they could do a,b,c… but offer no evidence this is happening.
They can steal all of your personal data!!!
Evidence please?
The information that can allow anyone on this planet to pretend to be me and get loans, cars etc. has been leaked enough times that I have “credit monitoring” until 3010… what the fsck can TikTok do with knowing what videos I like?
Oh they could give you misinformation!!
stares at Congress
Its just like the flu.
It was just like any other tourist visit.
The election was stolen.
We stand for smaller government!
Tax breaks for the ultra wealthy help the economy.
Masks can kill you!
The vaccine is a bioweapon.
I’d keep going but I think the point is so obvious even MTG can get it.
Once upon a time the US was a shining beacon to the world of truth, justice, etc… now some of our leaders are claiming we should just let Russia destroy a nation & murder the population because it might cost to much to help defend them.
Some how a random app is the biggest problem in a nation where covid is still killing people, the economy is fscked, corporations are posting record profits while citizens are facing higher interest rates to cool the economy… but omg tiktok!!
Invited a murderer to read the pledge of allegiance.
Tried to use a CCP controlled newspaper as ‘evidence’ in hearing.
Blamed the current POTUS for actions from the Former twice impeached POTUS.
They are passing laws to erase people from society, trying to pretend history didn’t happen that way, spreading hysteria about “groomers” while ignoring the actual child abusers hiding in the churches, kids have active shooter drills but its covid that harmed their learning.
But sure keep screaming about TikTok and trying to pass laws banning certain races of people from certain places from owning property if they are a citizen or not…