> Me: "<so and so> is a Chinese asset!"
I cannot believe this is allowed on this forum.
IIRC, you are suggesting some individual in your daughter's school, presumably a Chinese ethnic, is a "Chinese asset"? What do you mean by "Chinese asset"?
Edit: It seems I read the asset wrong. See replies below.
TikTok is a virally popular video app used globally by a generation of adolescence that have normalized the behavior of recording inane happenings in their life multiple times a day, with an undeveloped sense of propriety and limited ability to fully comprehend the significance of their actions.
Not that I have much of an opinion on TikTok's usage as an intelligence gathering source, I certainly appreciate its potential as one.
My daughters are constantly taking videos all over the place, with little regard to what is in the video beyond themselves. Even though they've been hounded on what is and isn't appropriate to capture in a video, I'm sure they have an under-developed sense of security/concern in that regard, particularly for "private" or deleted videos.
Access to the full corpus of video data uploaded to Tiktok would be a gold mine, least of which would actually be my adolescent daughters. Unrelated conversations picked up in the background, where/when they took the video, compromising/confidential artifacts exposed incidentally in the background, facial recognition on individuals in the video (whether the subject of the video or otherwise), etc. There are an immeasurable number of ways such a rich data source could be mined for signal intelligence.
Note that TikTok is far from the only app that fits this definition. There are plenty of other platforms that create a similarly useful corpus of video data. But anecdotally from my kids and their friends, TikTok is the flavor of the moment. Especially so for those young enough for the above concerns (or lack thereof) to be most valid.
Kompromat, bribery, and threats. Not watching kids videos.
And no one has to actually watch any videos for the above-mentioned use cases. It's an engineering assignment for data science and tech teams, not spies.
As well, there's a very hazy line between government and industry interests in China, greatly expanding the potential use cases of sigint derived from such incidental data leakage beyond just what would be useful for kompromat, bribery, and threat. purposes.
We don't know much about China's systems here, but looking at XKeyscore [0] (NSA, via Snowden leaks) is likely to be somewhat insightful re function and capabilities.
A quote: TikTok app permissions include personal information and device control
First, our researchers examined the permissions TikTok requires on Android and iOS devices following installation. While some of the permissions detailed below are to be expected, all of this is consistent with TikTok’s written privacy policy. However, when you see all that TikTok gathers it can still be of concern. In summary, these permissions allow TikTok to:
Access the camera (and take pictures/video), the microphone (and record sound), the device’s WIFI connection, and the full contact list on the device Determine if the internet is available and access it Keep the device turned on and automatically start itself when the device restarts Secure detailed information on the user’s location using GPS and other apps that are running Read and write to the device’s storage, install/remove shortcuts, access the flashlight (turn it off and on), request additional installation packages Our researchers found that TikTok has full access to the audio, video, and address book on the device, which isn’t surprising given that TikTok is an audio-visual app by design.
However, the GPS tracking is surprising, especially as TikTok videos don’t obviously display location information. TikTok does call out their collection of location information in their privacy policy.
Recap: TikTok does not need to be collecting contact and location data from my kids or any of our devices. This vacuuming up of information at scale reveals the relationships between people and a lot more. And that is my main problem. TikTok is way more than just a video app, its spyware.