I was highly skeptical of claims that China was using TikTok to collect swaths of information. A new report proved me right.
Earlier this year, the mainstream media, the government, and members of the security establishment were pushing conspiracy theories about how TikTok was this unique threat to North America and “Western” nations. Specifically, the conspiracy theories suggest, TikTok is collecting huge swaths of personal information on behalf of the Chinese government as part of their foreign interference.
One article I wrote back in Marchcontained comments I wrote back then expressing my skepticism:
The conspiracy theory is extremely silly and is easily deflated by pointing out that, worst case scenario, TikTok doesn’t pose a threat any greater than any other social media platform. After all, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have long been seen as at fault for aiding in the meddling of the US elections that allowed Donald Trump to become president, much to the delight of foreign adversaries. Yet, despite this, no one is even contemplating banning Facebook by any stretch of the imagination.
What’s more, there has been no evidence that says that TikTok collects information that is outside the norms of any other social media platform that we have ever seen. Even on the surface critical thinking would suggest that the idea that TikTok represents a unique threat to the world is absurd. How, exactly, is the Chinese government going to somehow meddle in elections if they happen to know you like cooking video’s? It’s a tad ridiculous if you ask me.
Additionally, let’s say North America bans TikTok in the first place. Does this really solve anything? Not really. There’s nothing stopping the Chinese government from buying up data from shady data brokers which is, arguably, a source that contains more detailed information anyway. You’re not really solving anything here.
Indeed, there were many logical gaps with these conspiracy theories and those gaps would ultimately become major credibility cracks as US intelligence came up empty handed when asked for evidence that China was using TikTok to gather huge swaths of personal information to influence elections. Instead, it was purely hypothetical and utilized little more than speculation to back those conspiracy theories up. Still, Canadian mainstream media was undeterred from a lack of evidence and continued pushing those conspiracy theories anyway, going so far as to speculate that China uses TikTok to take over your web camera and microphone to see and hear within your room.
Now, one thing I will note that, throughout that whole time, I never said that China would never engage in the activity of trying to obtain people’s personal information elsewhere (in fact, I repeatedly pointed out that nothing is stopping China from using data brokers to collect personal information – adding that banning TikTok solves nothing here). Yet, even people I meet physically were not only insisting that the stories were completely true and banning TikTok was perfectly justified under the circumstances. No amount of critical thinking was going to convince people otherwise.
The thing is, you’ll notice that while the TikTok conspiracy theories pushed by so many earlier this year is nowhere near as fever pitch today. Want to know why? Simply put, back in October, there was an explosive report about China hacking into the AT&T wiretap system and that access to such highly sensitive information had been going on for “months or longer”. The revelations, among other things, punched a huge hole in the TikTok conspiracy theories. Here’s what I wrote in response to this:
The same thought that entered Mike Masnick’s mind also popped into mine as well. For all the hand wringing about how TikTok was some sort of Chinese mind controlling machine, it seems that the real threat was found much closer to home with America’s own cell phone networks. Even if TikTok is being used as some nefarious spy machine, it’s kind of worthless when the Chinese government could directly access the cell phone networks and monitor internet traffic directly instead.
As I’ve long suggested, there are arguably better source for China to be nefariously collecting people’s personal information. While I suggested data brokers, it seems that, if anything, I wasn’t going far enough and should have suggested that China is more likely hacking into sources of personal information likely to contain higher quality data. What’s more, my insistence that we are better off going through the process of crafting federal level privacy laws that sets rules for how everyone handles personal information.
Today, we are learning of a new report that says that China had apparently accessed government networks for the last five years. From The Register:
A report by Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) revealed that state-backed actors have collected valuable information from government networks for five years.
The biennial National Cyber Threat Assessment described the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) cyber operations against Canada as “second to none.” Their purpose is to “serve high-level political and commercial objectives, including espionage, intellectual property (IP) theft, malign influence, and transnational repression.”
Over the past four years, at least 20 networks within Canadian government agencies and departments were compromised by PRC cyber threat actors.
The CSE assured citizens that all known federal government compromises have been resolved, but warned that “the actors responsible for these intrusions dedicated significant time and resources to learn about the target networks.”
The report also alleges that government officials – particularly those perceived as being critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – were attacked. One of those attacks includes an email operation against members of Interparliamentary Alliance on China.
Ouch. If the TikTok conspiracy theories were on life support before, they are now six feet under at this point. Seriously, why bother even going after people’s TikTok view history to find out that some people like silly cat video’s or dance video’s when you have access to sensitive government information? Arguably, that is a much higher value target in the first place.
What is particularly telling is that this Chinese access to government networks were going on as these conspiracy theories about TikTok were circulated by mainstream media in the first place. That is pretty darned humiliating if you ask me.
Now, it’s kind of expected that mainstream media would screw this up. They’ve long had a hate boner for social media and have actively tried blaming social media for everything for years. So, conspiracy theories that turn out to be wrong is kind of expected at this point because they’ll pretty much say anything to make social media in general look bad.
What is more scandalous, however, is the Canadian government and the security establishment being this horribly wrong about their assessments. The federal government suggested TikTok is doing what the media said it was. What’s more, CSIS was also playing up these conspiracy theories as well. I think that serious questions need to be raised as to how both the federal government and the intelligence organization got this so horribly wrong. I mean, surface level basic common sense would have raised red flags about these conspiracy theories, yet the establishment ran with these conspiracy theories anyway – even to the point of saying that TikTok is bad, don’t use it while actively using TikTok themselves.
The good news here is that the issues, at least as far as the government is concerned, has been resolved. Hopefully that is well and truly the case. Still, it is not too late to start looking seriously at federal level privacy laws that update’s the horribly out of date existing laws. That would be a sensible approach, but I’m not convinced that the government is in any way prepared to do something sensible on the privacy file at this point. If anything, I suspect privacy reform will die on the orderpaper and the whole process of slow walking, foot dragging, delay, delay, delay, will start all over again and Canadian’s will seen no meaningful change in the end.
