China passed a law a couple of years ago requiring all Chinese companies to give the government live access to their databases. Is TikTok exempt? If not, statements that the government hasn't requested any data are misleading. They don't need to.
The FCC commissioner just point out there is no firewall between Chinese engineers from rifling through and copying all the data from the “USA based” servers. It defies belief that anyone thinks that the CCP isn't doing exactly that lol and building up dossiers on every TikTok member. For example just find all the MAGA leaning people and try to convert them over to CCP terrorist cells. I mean I'm not a CIA analyst, but this is global espionage 101
Make America Great Again conservative "China virus" people are very much not aligned with Chinese communist party terrorist cells, and I don't see how anyone could believe they are unless you mentally lump everybody you don't like into a single bucket.
Is there any type of due process for when the Chinese government accesses data? Like do they need some court order? Or can a government official just go browse the databases for fun?
USA did the same in the name of anti-terrorism, after (possibly) blowing up their own twin towers. If I were an USA citizen I rather give my information to a Chinese company than to a USA company, since at least the Chinese can't raid me if they don't like me.
TikTok is technically not a Chinese company, so it wouldn't be affected by such a law. But I haven't read the law and don't know how accurate your summary of it is. Do you have a link?
> As the first consumer-facing app from China to take off in the West, TikTok is a source of pride in Beijing. But the app’s Chinese ownership makes politicians elsewhere uneasy about its tightening grip on their citizens’ attention
If you are a major company in China you are controlled by the CCP. They may leave the day to day business to execs but they are 100% at CCP beck and call. Look at what happened to Jack when you go too far off script. CCP has full access to US Servers (yeah I know that TikTok "US" says all data is kept here.
> As in, there are apparently sub companies, that are in the US, not in china,
Sure, the US "sub companies" are located physically in the US and managed day-to-day by US-based employees but they are still owned by a Chinese parent company meaning at the end of the day, they still report to managers/executive in China and are obligated to follow directions given to them by people working for Chinese parent company. If the Chinese government cotrols the Chinese parent company then they, by definition, control the US-based company as well.
Not seeing anything about live access in there. Maybe you're referring to this?
> The written regulations that give the Ministry of Public Security the right to just “take it” are the Regulation on Internet Security Supervision and Inspection by Public Security Organs (公安机关互联网安全监督检查规定).
But the law in question http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2018/content_5343745.htm doesn't actually grant public security organs the right to just "take it" as the blog post claims. Having the authority to request on-site network security audits or do penetration tests would certainly give spies ample opportunity to find ways to exfiltrate data, but that doesn't mean they're legally allowed to do so.
I guess not many people care whether Chinese intelligence agencies spy on TikTok users legally or extralegally, but I just wanted to know whether there really was such a law. Apparently not.
I like to say that the difference between Republicans and Democrats in the US is that Republicans break the law and Democrats subvert it.
It's no wonder that the largely liberal audience of HN supports the subversion route the US takes compared to the more brutal but vastly more honest way the Chinese do it.
