There’s a serious issue looming for Trump in his spiraling battle with TikTok—it hasn’t made headlines yet, but it will…
There’s a serious risk looming for President Trump in his fiery battle with TikTok—it hasn’t had much of a mention yet, but it will. If the next 44 days progress as planned, if Microsoft or an alternative U. S. suitor finds itself with the keys to TikTok, then overnight everything will change. And that could prompt some seriously difficult questions for the administration. As I’ve said repeatedly since the U. S. signalled its intention to censure this video-sharing app, TikTok is not spying on you. There is no evidence that suggests otherwise. Yes, TikTok does collect plenty of data—but so do all social media platforms. That data is fairly transparent and would be of little interest to a national security agency across millions of users. How do we know this? Security experts have reverse engineered the app, captured its data flows, analysed its activity. How those reports are nuanced is critical. You can attack as intrusive all social media apps for tagging locations, phone IDs and activity on their platforms. It’s a grey area. But it’s a world away from app that exfiltrate other data without permission—credentials. contacts, browser history, files, photos, feeds from cameras and microphones. When we speak of spyware, that’s what we mean. Trump and his team have been very specific in the allegations levelled at TikTok—these are not nuanced suggestions. TikTok and others “feed data directly to the Chinese Communist Party—their national security apparatus,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on August 2. “It could be facial recognition… their residence, their phone numbers, their friends, who they’re connected to.” The interesting twist in Microsoft potentially buying TikTok is its security expertise—the Redmond giant has one of the foremost cyber threat assessment and analysis capabilities in the world, and it’s called out nation state exploitation of consumer and enterprise hardware and software on numerous occasions. The gatekeeper will potentially capture an alleged poacher. This is very different from Facebook or a collection of tech investors buying TikTok. And so here’s the issue for the administration—if and when Microsoft does get its hands on TikTok, it will know for a fact the extent of any data exfiltration to Beijing and any capture and collection of user data above and beyond what’s known. It is inconceivable that TikTok would be able to hide such activity so deeply as to be hidden from the tech and security savvy new owners of the business.
