Eye for click

Chinese Tiktok is following the Americans?

The Federal Bureau of Investigations and the US Department of Justice investigation of the FORBES publication of publication that the popular Tiktok Internet application belonging to the Chinese company BYTEDANCE carried out the journalists who prepared investigations about the relations of the social media platform with the Chinese authorities.

According to FORBS sources, the Department of Fraud of the Department of Justice in cooperation with the US prosecutor's office in the eastern District of Virginia requested information on the monitoring of journalists from the company, the owner of Tiktok, and the FBI has already conducted interrogations on this topic.

For the first time about surveillance in October last year, Forbes journalist Emily Baker-White wrote. And even earlier - last summer - the publication Buzzfeed News has published an article that said that BYTEDANCE from China repeatedly gained access to user data in the United States. The material was based on more than 80 hours of audio recordings of internal meetings and negotiations of representatives of Tiktok, who were at the disposal of journalists. In the surveillance of at least three journalists of the Forbes publication-Emily Baker-White, Katherine Schwab and Richard Niva (all of them previously worked in Buzzfeed) and an unnamed journalist from the Financial Times was attended by the BYTEDANCE security and confidentiality. Moreover, the surveillance program bore the official name "Raven Project" (Project Raven).

With the help of Tiktok, the Chinese company tried to establish the coincidence of the location of American journalists and employees of the company in order to thus identify possible "moles"

(In the United States, such people are called “whistles”), “merging” the press of the company in the press. As Emily Baker-White notes in her materials, in the past she took places in the leadership of Facebook* (now Meta*) and Spotify and, thus, knows the “internal cuisine”. “This new information (about surveillance) strengthens the serious fears that the social networks platform allowed engineers and leaders of Tiktok in the Chinese People’s Republic repeatedly access to personal data from users from the United States, despite repeated assurances of lawmakers and users that these data were protected,” said Senator Democrat Mark Warner, chairman of the intelligence committee.

The materials that with the help of Tiktok is surveillance of the Americans and the information enters China, you can say, shot "in an apple." The White House and Congress have long been concerned about the activities of the popular Internet application, its belonging to “Communist China”. Decades ago, when the current president was still sitting in the Senate International Committee, American politicians were seriously strained by Chinese components in phones and computers working in America for espionage and sabotage. Today, this was added to this that through applications similar to Tiktok, China received not only access to the personal information of Americans, but also the ability to introduce its “agenda” - its narrative, tracking the algorithms of personal addictions and habits of American Internet users. Former President Donald Trump even banned this Internet resource with his decree, which was immediately challenged in the federal court (as violating the first amendment on freedom of speech) and was later canceled by Biden.

Tiktok from an innocent “dance application for children” turned in the eyes of official Washington into a “threat to national security”. The work of the platform is already limited or prohibited by administrations in most American states, in Canada and in the official structures of the European Union. American universities also join forces, limiting access to Tiktok in student dormitories. According to the memorandum of the control and budget management, all US state agencies and their contractors are required to delete Tiktok or any application by BYTEDANCE within 30 days (until April 1) - with some exceptions for national security, law enforcement agencies and research purposes. The White House is still opposed to the total ban on the popular platform, although the bill is ready in Congress, which grants President Biden such powers, despite the first correction and the fact that only in the United States this resource has over 100 million users.

According to the PEW research center, 67% of American adolescents use Tiktok, and 16% say that they use it “almost always”. The human rights organizations of America are against the ban on Tiktok.

Tiktok rejects the accusations that he has become an instrument of PRC policy and is trying to offer the American authorities his own version that relieves risks and concern. About this - below.

According to the results of the publication "Forbs" an official investigation was held. ByTedance fired Chris Litratak, its main internal auditor, who led the team of the Raven Project. The executive director of the Sun in China, who was subordinate to Litak and who, in turn, is directly subordinate to the general director of Bytedance to Rubo Liana, resigned. “Public trust, the creation of which we spent enormous efforts, is significantly undermined by the unlawful behavior of several people. ... I believe that this situation will serve as a lesson for all of us, ”Lyan wrote in an official email, which is quoted by Forbes.

“The presence of a group of internal audit, authorized to investigate violations of the Code of Investigation, is a standard practice for companies,” said Tiktok General Legal adviser Erich Andersen in another electronic letter transferred by Forbes: “However, in this case (some) people abused access to user data Tiktok.” Thus, in the Chinese company they did not deny surveillance. BYTEDANCE representative Jennifer Banks said: “ByTedance condemns the erroneous plan that violates the company's behavior.” But she said that ByTedance did not find evidence that in addition to Baker-White, there was a surveillance of other Forbes journalists, but the investigation was ongoing. The service materials that came to Forbes indicate the surveillance of the mop and Nieva. At the same time, the platform-owner company published on Twitter a statement that “Tiktok was never used to“ persecute ”any members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists,” and that “Tiktok could not track users in the United States as proposed in the article.” On the one hand, the “guilty are punished”, on the other hand, Tiktok and its owners insist, everything was not the way “Forbes” outlined. And that official inspections of the relations of employees with journalists are the “standard practice” of companies that take care of the safety of confidential information.

On Thursday, March 24, for the first time in Congress, at a hearing in the committee of the Congress on Energy and Trade, the Director General of Tiktok ZHI Chu show will be testified.

Explanations of the company’s policy and methods regarding the security of consumer data, the influence of the platform on children and relations with the Chinese Communist Party are expected from him.

Hearings are called “Tiktok: how Congress can maintain the confidentiality of American data and protect children from harm on the Internet.”

The Texas Project, developed by Tiktok, will limit China's access to user data in the United States. According to the company, more than $ 1.5 billion is invested in user data safety. For two years, the company has been negotiating a contract with the Committee of the US Department of Finance on Foreign Investments (CFIUS). The contract will regulate as the Chinese application for social networks processes the personal user data of Americans. The company also sought to dispel the concerns about ties with China, working to ensure that information about users from the United States would not go beyond the limits of America and stored in the data center managed by the American company Oracle. Talks about such a program have been conducted for a long time, because the Chinese belonging Tiktok is the main and seemingly indispensable problem for the further work of this platform with the United States.

But can they trust in Washington promises? As Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Commission for Communications notes: “At the very moment when Tiktok is trying to convince US officials that he can be trusted when he has all the incentives to ensure the safety of user data, his mother's company abused his systems to receive data on reporters covering Tiktok. This should be the last nail in the coffin cover of the idea that US officials can trust this company. ” The Federal Commission for Communications (FCC) is an independent agency of the American government, which regulates the distribution of radio, television, satellite and cable channels and other means of communication and information in the United States, including international.

So far, between the two superpowers there is not only strict competition, but also a direct confrontation (although Joe Biden publicly called for the opposite: to compete, but not to fall into a political confrontation), the simple and obvious solution to the Tiktok problem. So far, the company from the Middle Kingdom owns it.