The proposed TikTok ban is more about politics than privacy, according to experts
U.S. Security Threats: Where are we going? How to ditch passwords and set up passwords in Google Chrome and Android, and How to Avoid Runningsomware in Exchange Server
As Russian war in Ukrainedrags on, Ukrainian forces have succeeded in mounting intense attacks on Kremlin forces. The conflict is entering a phase of drone warfare. Russia has started using Iranian “suicide drones” to carry out attacks that are difficult to defend against. With Russian president Vladimir Putin escalating his rhetoric about the potential for a nuclear strike, and NATO officials watching closely for any signs of movement, we examine what indicators are available to the global community in assessing 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 worried about the ongoing threat of ransomware attacks around the world, researchers pointed out this week that middle-of-the-pack groups like the notorious gang Vice Society are maximizing profits and minimizing their exposure by investing very little in technical innovation. They do not run many operations like they can to focus on the under-funded sectors. If you’re looking to do something for your personal security, we’ve got a guide to ditching passwords and setting up “passkeys” on Android and Google Chrome.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-bytedance-americans-data-security-roundup/
The TikTok Song Is Playing to the Fox News Crowd: A Novel Leaked Communications between Microsoft and Prospective Customers of its Cloud Services
But wait, there’s more! We highlight the news that we didn’t cover in-depth. Click on the headlines to read the full story. And stay safe out there.
A person close to TikTok said on Tuesday that the song is playing to the Fox News crowd. The person noted that many of the lawmakers expressing concern about China’s influence are ironically expressing such sentiments from their Chinese-made iPhones.
Microsoft said this week that a misconfiguration exposed the data of some prospective customers of its cloud services. The leak to Microsoft was disclosed by researchers from the threats intelligence firm, and the exposure was quickly closed. The exposed information was found in a report that spanned from last year to this year. More than 60,000 organizations from over 100 countries 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.
Security Labels for the Internet of Things: The U.S., China, and the “Davos in the Desert” debate
There are no easy answers to improve the longstanding security dumpster fire created by cheap, undefended internet of things devices in homes and businesses around the world. After years of trouble, countries such as Singapore and Germany have found that they need to put security labels on internet-connected cameras, printers, 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. This week, the United States took a step in this direction. The White House announced plans for a labeling scheme that would be a sort of EnergyStar for IoT digital security. The administration held a summit with industry organizations and companies this week to discuss standards and guidelines for the labels. “A labeling program to secure such devices would provide American consumers with the peace of mind that the technology being brought into their homes is safe, and incentivize manufacturers to meet higher cybersecurity standards, and retailers to market secure devices,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
The Washington Post reported on this week that the FBI seized documents related to the Iran nuclear program at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump. “Unauthorized disclosures of specific information in the documents would pose multiple risks, experts say. People aiding US intelligence efforts could be endangered, and collection methods could be compromised,” the Post wrote. The information could potentially cause other countries to retaliate against the US.
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday he is more concerned about global geopolitics than he is about slowing economic growth in the United States.
At the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he stated that there were a lot of bad things on the horizon that could potentially put the US in a recession.
“That is not the most important thing we think about.” We’ll manage through that. The discussion between some of the most influential financiers in the country at the event, which is known as “Davos in the Desert,” was moderated by CNN’s Richard Quest, who told him that he was more worried about the geopolitics of the world today.
There are disagreements between the United States and China over issues such as the war inUkraine and the status of the world’s second biggest economy.
“The relationships of the Western world would have me far more concerned than whether there’s a mild or slightly severe recession [in the United States],” he added.
The breakdown of relationships — and the negative consequences for everything from national security to energy supply and food security — was a persistent theme during the discussion. The isolating effect of the Pandemic has impacted on communication between people and the ability to learn from one another.
Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of hedge fund Bridgewater, said there is an “existential risk of international war.” He thinks there is a need for a strong political middle that is stronger than the extremes.
“If you don’t have strong American leadership — not ugly American leadership, not ‘our way or the highway’ — just as a coalescing thing for the Western world, you’re going to have chaos like you see in Ukraine,” he said.
Dimon said he was confident that the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia will remain strong, despite tensions that escalated following the decision by OPEC+ to slash oil production earlier this month.
“Saudi Arabia and the United States have been allies for 75 years. I can’t imagine any of the allies agreeing on everything and not having problems. They’ll work it through… and remain allies going forward,” he said.
Jamie Dimon: Beyond the Walls: The Future Investment Initiative in a World of Social Media and the Art of Digital Citizenship and Identity Protection
American’s will likely run out of excess money around the middle of the year as businesses and consumer spending remain robust, according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Solomon believes that there will be interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. “If you find yourself in a situation where inflation is embedded, it’s very hard to get out of it without an economic slowdown,” he added, commenting that Europe might already be in recession.
One of the things that we are not aware of is the difficulties of government in a world of social media. Some people shouting down others trying to accomplish something for the benefit of the world is why Initiatives to try to ‘Make the world a better place’ are undermined.
Social media users should be like people who need verification to access the banking system, which would help get rid of bots, according to Dimon.
A “menu of choices” should be offered to social media users, so that they understand how the systems work. “They should give you a choice as opposed to manipulating you,” he added.
Notwithstanding the downsides of social media or political and economic divisions, the panelists were optimistic about the power of innovation to improve the state of the world.
He said that technological progress on a variety of fronts was capable of lifting us up and moving us forward.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/business/jamie-dimon-david-solomon-future-investment-initiative/index.html
State of the Art: Proposed Security Measures for the Chinese-owned TikTok App under the Supermajority Party in the House of Representatives
Saudi Arabia’s Future Investment Initiative, which runs until October 27, started in 2017 under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “Vision 2030,” a plan to attract international investment and wean the economy off oil.
The announcement comes weeks after Republicans officially took over as the majority party in the House. They were quick to heighten scrutiny of the Chinese-owned app that boasts over 80 million active users in the US, citing its potential risk to national security.
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.
The White House told the US federal agencies to remove TikTok from their devices within 30 days. There is a policy debate in Washington about what to do about one of the most popular apps by American youth.
The Chinese ownership of TikTok has prompted concerns from government officials because of it’s dominance in pop culture.
“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.
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.
Do we really need TikTok for geopolitical science? A White House press conference on March 10th, 2003, Ukrainian invasion of Ukraine
Some lawmakers fear that the location tracking service within the app could be used for espionage. When it comes to social media apps, location tracking is a standard feature.
The Senate-passed bill would provide exceptions for “law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, and security researchers.”
But while legislators are working to limit TikTok, Berkman acknowledges how difficult it would be to get users off the app. More than a billion users flock to its site each month, reported the app last year.
On March 10, two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian, the White House held a call with 30 prominent TikTok creators. Jen Psaki, then the White House press secretary, and members of the National Security Council staff briefed the creators, who together had tens of millions of followers, on the latest news from the conflict and the White House’s goals and priorities. The meeting followed a similar effort the previous summer, in which the White House recruited dozens of TikTokers to help encourage young people to get vaccinated against Covid.
At least 14 states have recently banned the application from being used on government devices; some state-run public universities followed suit, banning or blocking the app on their campuses.
Byte Dance is required by Chinese law to assist the government which means they can include sharing user data from anywhere in the world.
There is not enough time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company. It’s time to stop Beijing-controlled TikTok.
Big Tech: A Boundary on the Privacy of the U.S. from the Privacy Protection of Location-Based Apps and Weather Apps
“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. The weather app and lots of other apps that are in your phone, whether or not they’re owned by China or not, are also related to that.
Ryan Calo is a professor of law and information science at the University of Washington. While data privacy in the United States still needs improvement, the proposed legislation is more about geopolitics than TikTok.
He says it is always easy to say that a foreign government is a threat and that you need to protect yourself. I think we ought to be cautious about how politicized that can be in order to achieve political ends.
Both Chander and Calo are skeptical that an outright TikTok ban would gain much political momentum, and both argue that even if it were to move forward, banning a communication platform would raise First Amendment concerns. Calo believes that the conversation could push policy in a positive direction.
“I think that we’re right in the United States to be finally thinking about the consequences of having so much commercial surveillance taking place of U.S. citizens and residents,” he said. “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’s much more challenging 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 tech industry’s largest players have faced a kitchen sink of allegations in recent years. Big Tech has been called one of Washington’s largest villains for a variety of reasons, from knee-capping new rivals to hurting children and mental health.
The Tech Big Tech Problem: An Analysis of ByteDance, Amazon, Google, and Amazon During 2019-2019 Lobbying
“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.
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 dollars on lobbying last year and its lobbyist count had doubled in just one year.
Meta spent $20 million last year, becoming the internet industry’s biggest lobbyist. Next was Amazon at $19 million, then Google at almost $10 million. Combined, that’s roughly $49 million in lobbying — almost 10 times what was spent by TikTok’s parent, which nevertheless clocked in at number four on the list.
One of those bills, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), would erect new barriers between tech platforms’ various lines of business, preventing Amazon, for example, from being able to compete with third-party sellers on its own marketplace. That legislation was a product of a 16-month House antitrust investigation into the tech industry that concluded, in 2020, that many of the biggest tech companies were effectively monopolies.
Lawmakers seemed to have the chance to pass a bill that would force platforms like Meta to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues. The bill stumbled after Meta warned it could have to pull all its news content from its platforms if the bill passed.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/tech/washington-tiktok-big-tech/index.html
The Tech Scenario: The First Amendment vs. the Politics of U.S. Users: An Analysis of the March 23 Hearing on TikTok
Silicon Valley’s biggest players have defended their turf in Washington countless times, after being attacked by lawmakers.
By contrast, decisions about the rules the government might impose on tech platforms have asked how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy from small businesses to individual users.
Legislation to amend the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Section 230 gives social media companies a pass on hate speech and offensive content if it isn’t reported, according to the Democrats. Republicans want to change the law to make it harder for platforms to remove less offensive content.
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 CEO of TikTok is expected to testify before Congress about user safety and security on the popular video app, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
A bill was considered by Senator Mark Warner to ban a category of applications that pose security risks.
Michael Bennet sent a letter to the companies’ CEOs, asking them to remove TikTok from their app stores.
In a rare public interview at the New York Times DealBook summit in the summer of 2007, the CEO of TikTok spoke candidly about the company’s plan to move all of its data from Virginia and Singapore to the US.
The uproar surrounding the revelations that employees of ByteDance have accessed data of US users over the last few years made it possible to ban the app.
Responding to Monday’s hearing announcement, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter welcomed “the opportunity to set the record straight.” Oberwetter said TikTok plans to discuss its “comprehensive plans” to protect US user safety during the March 23rd hearing.
Apple and the US – China Connection: Apple, Tik Tok, ByteDance, and the Rest of the World: What’s Happening?
Unlike Google, Apple has a lot to lose regarding its relationship with both the US and China. Cook is able to maintain working relationships with manufacturers in China, a factor that helped him success at Apple.
The company welcomed the chance to set the record straight about Tik Tok, ByteDance and the commitments they are making.
Congress can use the information from the comprehensive plans with the full Committee to take a more deliberative approach to the issues at hand.
“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? Or use an app that’s on the phone of 60 million Americans to drive narratives in society that try to influence political debate in this country?” says Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida.
Senate Republican Mike Rounds of South Dakota said that there was no question that they were trying to gather as much data as they could on all aspects of our country. There is a huge amount of data but it is only the small pieces that add up. They are working on it. They are patient. But they clearly see us as a threat, and they’re collecting data.”
The senator told congressional reporters after hosting Chew in his office that the efforts were not relevant to his concerns.
The Loaded Gun – A State Senator’s Perspective on Tech Corrupt Practices and Silicon Valley Bank Inclusive Bankruptcy
“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.
There is a debate about our status that ignores facts of the agreement and what has already been achieved. Brooke Oberwetter from TikTok said they will continue to deliver a national security plan for the American people.
A bipartisan Senate bill that Virginia Democrat Mark Warner and South Dakota Republican John Thune are expected to unveil on Tuesday would give the Commerce Department authority to develop “mitigation measures,” up to and including a ban, to meet the risk posed by foreign-linked technologies.
Like the US government push to ban hardware and other gear made by Huawei, another Chinese technology giant, US officials are often short on specifics when asked to show public proof of collusion between the Chinese government and ByteDance.
Rob Joyce said people were looking for a smoking gun in the technologies. I refer to it as a loaded gun.
One of the senators who are demanding briefings from intelligence officials and tech experts is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lawmakers fear that the financial system could be disrupted by malicious actors using false information and bots in order to sway public opinion and create bank runs.
Silicon Valley Bank was in dire straits after it became clear that it had made a bad bet with long-dated government debt. Many of its customers were venture capitalists and tech company founders and some of whom spread news and rumors online, causing a panic that led to the bank’s demise.
The Internet is the enemy: Social media is a weapon for economic and social reform in the U.S. Sen. Ericet Snowmass 2020 presidential campaign
While walking onto the Senate floor, he dropped his voice and said that he was worried that too many people would hear him. “I’m 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 said that investment forums were to blame.
In recent years, members of the Intelligence Committee have received a number of briefings on the potential for manipulating US markets with deepfakes.
After the election of 2016, foreign actors have been using social media to harm America as we have proof of what they tried to do. Russia, China, Iran and others use social media to undermine the United States and our civility, and they do it to disrupt economic issues and social issues. That is a risk.
