More Less, the Silicon Valley-based software engineer, and the political misinformation that the US has to offer: How much do we know?

“I’m an engineer; I like facts: one is one, zero is zero,” says More Less, the online pseudonym of a Silicon Valley-based software engineer from China. “I think it’s my responsibility to rebut this nonsense.”

More Less asked not to be identified by his real name because his posts might attract harassment. The Chinese-language fact-checking blog was created as part of a grassroots movement to battle political misinformation spread by US users of Chinese-language social media. His recent posts have taken on claims that California Democrats made it legal to shoplift up to $950 in goods or that widespread voter fraud distorted the 2020 presidential election.

More Less and other activists in Chinese American communities worry that misinformation in the US could cause people to not vote or sway the results in the upcoming elections.

China’s government censors online content, as well as banning ads or sponsored content on political issues, according to the US acceptable use policy. The platform in the US is largely unmoderated according to people tracking misinformation. There are questions about misinformation being spread among US users.

The only thing we get is the garbage. Nobody is cleaning it up,” says Jin Xia Niu, Chinese digital engagement program manager at nonprofit Chinese for Affirmative Action. The San Francisco organization launched a Chinese language fact-checking initiative in June called PiYaoBa, which posts articles on its website and public WeChat accounts that are in the same style as FactCheck.org.

How Do You Know Microsoft is Hacking? What Are You Reading About Russian Cybercrime and the Ukraine’s “Suicide Drones”?

TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told NPR the company is “disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies that will do nothing to advance cybersecurity in their states.”

Bytedance’s Internal Audit team was supposed to be keeping an eye on anyone who currently works for the company or worked previously for the company, but was planning on snooping on two Americans who had never worked for a company before, according to an article posted on Thursday. The Forbes report was based on materials that it reviewed, but it did not include information about who was potentially going to be tracked or why ByteDance was doing so.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on, Ukrainian forces have proved resilient and mounted increasingly intense counterattacks on Kremlin forces. But as the conflict evolves, it is entering an ominous phase of drone warfare. Russia is starting to launch attacks using Iranian “suicide drones” to cause damage that is hard 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.

Research shows that middle-of-the-pack groups like the notorious gang Vice Society are maximizing profits and decreasing their exposure to technical innovation if they are worried about the ongoing threat of Ransomware Attacks around the world. Instead, they simply run the most sparse and unremarkable operations they can to target under-funded sectors like health care and education. 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.

A Hitchin’s Tale of Cloud Misconfigurations in America: The Threat Information Economy and Data Security Roundup — the tiktokbyteance-americans-data-security-roundup

There is more. We highlight the news that we did not cover in-depth. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Some prospective customers of its cloud services have their data exposed due to a misconfiguration. The leak to Microsoft was quickly closed by the researchers from the threat intelligence firm. The exposed information went back to as far as the summer of 2017: according to the report. The researchers linked the data to more than 65,000 organizations from 111 countries. Microsoft said the exposed details included names, company names, phone numbers, email addresses, 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.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-bytedance-americans-data-security-roundup/

Security Labels for Internet of Things Devices: The U.S. Step Towards a Energy Star for Digital Security and the Protection of Undersea Cables

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. But after years of problems, countries like Singapore and Germany have found that adding security labels to internet-connected video cameras, printers, toothbrushes, 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 the right direction. The White House announced plans for a labeling scheme that would be a sort of EnergyStar for IoT digital security. The administration met with companies and industry organizations this week to discuss standards for 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.

Sources told The Washington Post this week that sensitive information related to Iran‘s nuclear program and the United States’ own intelligence operations in China were included in documents seized by the FBI this summer at former President Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “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 also potentially motivate retaliation by other countries against the US.

Open internet proponents were relieved last month when an American candidate beat a Russian challenger in an election to run the International Telecommunications Union, an important international standards body tasked with cross-boundary communications. Meanwhile, though, we took a look at the fragility of the world’s internet infrastructure and the vulnerability of crucial undersea cables.

The new legal climate for abortion access is promoting a culture of community surveillance, a hallmark of authoritarian states in which neighbors are encouraged to report possible wrongdoing. Soccer stadiums around the world are seeing more and more people looking at them. The eight stadiums in use during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, for example, will be packed with more than 15,000 cameras to monitor spectators and to conduct biometric scanning.

Liz Truss: A rough time for the Internet and the UK, and what can we do to protect ourselves against the Rust hacking bug?

The more secure, “memory safe” programming language Rust is making inroads across the tech industry, offering hope that a massive swath of common vulnerabilities could eventually be preempted and eliminated. In the meantime, we’ve got a roundup of the most important vulnerabilities that you can—and should!—patch right now.

Liz Truss is having a rough time. After her short time as the UKprime minister, the Mail on Sunday reported that her cell phone was hacked when she was foreign minister. The breach allegedly allowed these Russian operatives to intercept messages between Truss and officials in other countries, including messages about Ukraine. The Mail report further claims that former prime minister Boris Johnson and cabinet secretary Simon Case suppressed the breach. Labor Party officials want to know if there is a breach in the party’s relationship with the Conservatives. “There are immensely important national security issues raised by an attack like this by a hostile state which will have been taken extremely seriously by our intelligence and security agencies,” Labor Party shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said last weekend. “There are also serious security questions around why and how this information has been leaked or released right now, which must also be urgently investigated.”

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-eu-privacy-policy-security-roundup/

The Jack Dorsey Cash App Fuels Sex Slavery in the US, according to a Forbes Associated with Its Social Media Anarchy

Another of Jack Dorsey’s corporate creations is facing new heat this week. The Cash App is helping to fuel sex slavery in the US, according to a Forbes investigation. The investigation found that the Cash App was used in a lot of sex crimes, as well as other crimes. Cash App, which is owned by Block Inc., maintains that it doesn’t tolerate illegal activity and has staff dedicated to working with law enforcement. Meanwhile, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that although rival payment platforms like PayPal provide the the center with tips about potential child abuse facilitated by their services, Forbes writes, “Block hasn’t provided any tips, ever.”

The US Treasury Department said this week that US financial institutions helped to facilitate nearly $1 billion in ransomware payments in the next two years. An international White House summit was held in order to combat the rise of the types of malicious software that allow attackers to keep a target’s files locked up until a fee is paid. Himamauli Das, acting director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, said in a statement that “ransomware—including attacks perpetrated by Russian-linked actors—remain a serious threat to our national and economic security. While $1.2 billion in payments is already painful enough, the number does not take into account the costs and other financial consequences that come with a ransomware attack outside of the payment itself.

“It’s playing to the Fox News crowd,” a person close to TikTok, who requested anonymity because they were not publicly authorized to speak on the matter, said on Tuesday. The person noted that many of the lawmakers expressing concern about China’s influence are ironically expressing such sentiments from their Chinese-made iPhones.

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.

Some government agencies turned to the platform to spread their messages. NPR found examples of state government agencies on TikTok, ranging from the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation to the Oregon Secretary of State.

The lengthy talks between TikTok and the US government on a potential deal that could allow the company to address the national security concerns and continue serving US users is what distinguishes the flurry of activity.

Oberwetter said the agreement under review will address any security concerns raised at both the federal and state level. “These plans 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, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them.”

Why is TikTok Popular? The Anti-Tikik Problem in the Social Media Landscape: An Empirical Comment on Wray’s Concerns

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can receive a daily digest of the media landscape here.

Government officials are alarmed by its widespread usage. In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray raised eyebrows after he told lawmakers that the app could be used to control users’ devices.

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. Last year, the app reported that more than a billion users flock to its site each month.

The administration’s contradictory approach to TikTok — its embrace of the app as a vital conduit to the public, and its fear of the app as a potential tool of foreign influence — is perhaps a fitting response to the utterly unique problem that TikTok poses. Seemingly overnight, TikTok has managed to remake American culture both low and high, from media and music to memes and celebrity, in its own image. TikTok turned Olivia Rodrigo into a household name and propelled the author Colleen Hoover to the top of the best-seller list, with more copies sold this year than the Bible. TikTok coined “quiet quitting,” one of the hallmark phrases of 2022, and introduced a whole new dialect of algospeak — “seggs,” “unalive,” “le dollar bean” — that is now spreading across pop culture. Corporations and brands, from Goldfish crackers to Prada, have redirected billions of dollars worth of advertising to the platform in recognition of its all-encompassing reach, which can, at seemingly any moment, turn even a decades-old product into a must-have item. There were more site visits for TikTok last year than there were for the entire world. Nine years took Facebook to reach a billion users, while TikTok only lasted five.

The State of the Art: The China-Based Users’ Right to Know about TikTok and ByteDance in the United States

While the company denies it would ever be used for nefarious purposes, national security experts say China-based businesses usually have to give unfettered access to the authoritarian regime if information is ever sought.

So the ban on federal government devices is an incremental restriction: Most drastic measures have not advanced, since the efforts lacked the political will, or courts intervened to stop them.

TikTok has been criticized for exposing potentially harmful content to teenagers related to suicide and eating disorders.

“There is no easy way to determine whether or not ByteDance’s claims about its operations in the United States are true,” said Sameer Patil, professor at the University of Utah, who studies user privacy online.

He said that it’s usually overblown to the extent they know about users on an individual level, and that social media companies are certainly harvesting all kinds of data about users.

Responding to Chair Rodgers’s security claims, Oberwetter said Monday, “The Chinese Communist Party has neither direct nor indirect control of ByteDance or TikTok. Moreover, under the proposal we have devised with our country’s top national security agencies through CFIUS, that kind of data sharing—or any other form of foreign influence over the TikTok platform in the United States—would not be possible.”

There is a possibility that the committee will approve the steps taken by TikTok to make sure that user data and Chinese employees are not in contact with each other.

CFIUS deliberations are famously secretive and happen behind closed doors. It is not clear when the committee will finish its work and which way it is leaning.

An Analysis of a U.S. TikTok Study of Human Rights Violations in China, Using a Statement by Michael Oberwetter

“Michael absolutely did acknowledge that there are human rights violations happening in China,” said Brooke Oberwetter, spokeswoman for TikTok, in a statement. He said that determination is outside of his area of expertise, as head of public policy for TikTok. As head of public policy for TikTok, his role is to explain TikTok’s approach to the content that Jake asked about, which he did several times.”

Security experts have said that the data could allow China to identify intelligence opportunities or to seek to influence Americans through disinformation campaigns.

“Look, I think there are many human rights violations that are happening in China and around the world,” Beckerman said. “I think these are very important. I don’t think I am qualified to tell you about human rights violations around the world.

In a report published last week, the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate found that it can take less than three minutes after signing up for a TikTok account to see content related to suicide and about five more minutes to find a community promoting eating disorder content.

Beckerman dismissed Tapper’s concern that American parents may see that study and think that the Chinese government is trying to destroy our kids. Beckerman nodded to the app’s parental controls, but he called Tapper’s argument hypocritical.

Beckerman said that there are some people in China who are complaining about employees in China and acts from China, and that they want us to apply Chinese-style media rules. “We have freedom of speech, among other things here in the United States.”

The Time for Beijing to Be Banned From TikTok: Why Is China So Secure? — And Why Does The U.S. Need To Be Bound?

The state of Nebraska has had a ban on all state devices since 2020. The Department of Financial Services has also done so. Louisiana and West Virginia each announced partial bans.

Chinese companies are required to provide customer information that relates to China’s national security. TikTok has more user information than other popular social media apps. No one knows if ByteDance has ever given this information to the Chinese government. ByteDance admitted in December that it had fired some employees from China and the U.S. for snooping on American citizens and journalists, but it did not mention that the employees were fired because of government interference.

“There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company,” Rubio said in a statement. It’s time for Beijing to be banned from TikTok.

It makes sense for soldiers to be told not to use the app because it may leak their location information to other entities. It’s true of the weather app and many other applications in your phone, whether they’re owned by China or not.

The ban on TikTok would immediately address our national security concerns about the wildly popular Chinese-owned video app. But such a ban might ultimately put our national security at greater risk. It would sidestep a bigger problem, which is our failure to address concerns over the huge amount of personal data collected in our digital lives, especially when that data could be used by foreign adversaries.

The Chinese intelligence sector wouldn’t have to go to TikTok if it wanted to get information on certain employees of the United States.

It’s easy to say a foreign government is a threat, and that you’re protecting them. “And I think we should be a little cautious about how that can be politicized in a way that far exceeds the actual threat in order to achieve political ends.”

A Conversation on the First Amendment and the State of the Art in the Context of a Digital Economy: The Case of the U.S.

Both Calo and Chander believe that banning a communication platform would raise First Amendment concerns, even if an entire ban on TikTok were to move forward. But Calo believes the conversation could push policy in a positive direction for Americans.

The United States is right to be thinking about the consequences of having so much commercial surveillance taking place, 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.”

Tech giants have frequently sent their CEOs to Capitol Hill, who have argued about the threat of Chinese competition. They’ve also leaned on help from trade associations they’re members of and relied on advertising campaigns to make the case against some of the biggest legislative threats to their business.

Simple narratives, well-funded lobbying, and genuine policy questions can make or break a bill. It also hints at how a select few Big Tech companies continue to maintain their dominance in the market and their centrality in the lives of countless US households.

Lobbying in China: amidst concerns about the tech industry and the implications of the AICOA campaign, as indicated by ByteDance, Google, Amazon and Meta

There’s no evidence yet that that has actually happened. Panelists and security experts say that the Chinese national security laws allow it to be a possibility, that it fits into a larger anti-China narrative about issues including human rights and trade. There are renewed concerns after it was suggested that China-based employees had repeatedly accessed the US user data. TikTok disagrees with the report.

“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. By the end of last year, its lobbyist count had more than doubled and the company had spent nearly $5.2 million on lobbying.

Meta was the biggest internet industry lobbying giant last year, spending upward of $20 million. 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.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) would prevent Amazon from being able to compete with third party sellers on its own marketplace, because of the barriers it would erect between technology platforms. 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.

For a brief moment this month, lawmakers seemed poised to pass a bill that could force Meta, Google and other platforms to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues. The bill was in danger of falling apart after Meta warned that it would have to remove news content from its platforms if the bill passed.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/22/tech/washington-tiktok-big-tech/index.html

What Do Tech Platforms Have to Tell Us About Tech Innovation and How Do They Impact Students’ Lives, Learn How to Create, Share, and Disturb Social Media?

Silicon Valley’s biggest players have been doing their best to defend their turf in the US capital.

By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Democrats have said Section 230 should be changed because it gives social media companies a pass to leave some hate speech and offensive content unaddressed, while Republicans have called for changes to the law so that platforms can be pressured to remove less 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.

Establishing a Republican brand is important. A central tenet of what unites Republicans now is taking a strong stance [and] standing up to China,” says Thad Kousser, professor of political science at U.C. San Diego.

Social media research and teaching have become staples in academia and higher education curriculums. Modern communication has changed with the app because of it’s practices, practices, stories and information-sharing.

From an educational standpoint, how are media and communications professors supposed to train students to be savvy content creators and consumers if we can’t teach a pillar of the modern media landscape? Even though students are able to access TikTok in the privacy of their own homes, professors can’t show them links in class or use PowerPoint slides to talk about it. Brands, companies, and novel forms of storytelling all rely on TikTok, and professors will no longer be able to train their students in best practices for these purposes. Additionally, TikTok makes parts of the world more accessible, as students can see the things they are learning about in real time.

The world keeps turning as these states implement their bans, leaving their citizens disadvantaged in a fast-paced media world. Additionally, media and communications students in the states will be at a disadvantage in applying for jobs, showcasing communicative and technical mastery, and brand and storytelling skills, as their peers from other states will be able to receive education and training.

Professors are required to do research. If these bans persist, social media scholars in these states can’t do what they are hired to do and be experts in this field. While university compliance offices have said the bans may only be on campus Wi-Fi and mobile data is still allowed, who will foot that bill for one to pay for a more expensive data plan on their phone? The answer is no one. While working at home does remain an option, professors are also employees who are expected to be on campus regularly to show they are in fact working. It means any social media professor trying to research TikTok on a campus will have to rely on video streaming via mobile data, which can be quite expensive as well as accidentally going over one’s limits.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the head of TikTok will appear before Congress in March to face questions about user safety and security.

According to reports, Senator Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was considering offering a bill to ban a wider category of applications that pose security risks.

The app, owned by ByteDance, Inc., has been under fire since the Trump administration, when the former president signed an executive order to enforce a nationwide ban of the app, but ByteDance sued and it never went through.