Americans are worried: China’s TikTok threat to the US

by time news

The US is troubled by the functions behind and within the Tiktok application. The attempts to calm the CEO of the company failed to act on the members of Congress who are troubled by deep Chinese espionage in American society. Now the US government may well decide to block the application for use in the US.

We talked about this battle of the giants with Osher Asor, a cyber and information security expert and a cyber consultant to the Ministry of Defense, a member of the consulting company Marriage Israel. “It is not new that social networks collect information about us, and we have already seen Facebook’s public trial in the US. Awareness has been growing in recent years. The problem with Tik Tok is that it is managed by a Chinese company,” says Asur and mentions that the diplomatic tensions between the US and China relate quite a bit to the entire issue of information security.

“We know that the Chinese have a tendency to collect information both on the users in China and on the users all over the world in their services, both in their mobile products and in their social networks, and in almost every chip they develop, in the end it turns out that they are trying to collect information about the same user,” says Asur and points out that This is not speculation about the Chinese capabilities, but cases that were indeed revealed in the past. “There have been several incidents where information security researchers have identified chips that extract information. The information exists in a social network and is being collected by a Chinese company. We need to know what information is being collected and what we are allowing.”

“You download an application that gets the ability to microphone the camera and GPS, and it is a young crowd that uses Tiktok, which means that it is also quite a few soldiers and the meaning of photographs inside bases and information that is revealed when everything reaches a Chinese company.”

Is it even possible to make an American block on Tiktok? “In the USA, it is possible to carry out a blanket blocking of Tiktok that will not be approved, not only at the level of the statement, but a technological infrastructural blocking, just as in Korea and Iran various internet capabilities are blocked. This is how it is also possible in the US to block so that those who want to use it will have to bypass many blocks to do so.” Faced with this technological possibility, voices are already being heard in the US against the move on the pretext that it is gagging. Asor responds and says that “there is a difference between gagging and transferring information to a body that is not bound by regulation.”

In his words, he points out that European apps comply with the Privacy Protection Act and “any user can delete information stored on them. On the other hand, the Chinese have no regulation and there is no one to oblige them. Here comes the American concern that users have no control over what information is collected about them and if they can delete it.” .

According to him, the American concern about what is happening around Tik Tok has existed for a long time, but the public awareness of the problems involved in it was not immediate. On the possibility that the young people in the US and other Western countries went out to protest following a decision to block Tiktok, Asor says that there is a tremendous increase in the use of the application and now the numbers are estimated at several millions and it is expected that such a block will indeed disturb many, especially those who have become network influencers thanks to the application and the many who do not even make a living from it Bad, but on the other hand, the younger generation is inventing more and more social platforms that can be switched to. “It’s all a question of how sweeping the block will be and if it will only be in the US, or if it will include more countries that will veto it.”

The danger behind Tiktok also exists in Israel, sharpens a decade. “The USA is Israel’s largest diplomatic partner. Israeli information will reach China, and we know about the connection between China and Russia and Iran, we don’t want information to reach these places through such and such communications.”

When asked if he thinks it is right to advise the US president to block Tiktok, Asur says that it is a difficult question. “Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the users to be aware that information is being collected about them and try to reduce it. I would advise to apply controls and perhaps impose regulation on China as there is on Europe in the field of user information collection. How much can China be trusted? It already depends on diplomatic relations.”

Will China receive instructions from the US? Asor mentions that China is aimed at the international market and if the US influences the whole world in aspects of Tiktok the Chinese may bend, although “they are a power in themselves with their own amount of users and they don’t need the whole world. They have Their own WhatsApp and their own platforms. Tiktok is the first swallow and that is why it is so essential.”

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