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[0] Concerns about user privacy, national security, and the targeting of children through the popular video app TikTok has prompted congressional hearings.
[1] TikTok CEO, Shōz Chiu, testified before Congress on Thursday, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed concerns about the platform's privacy practices and the connection between the company and the communist Chinese government.
[2] In this episode, we talk with a tech expert about the TikTok hearings, concerns raised by lawmakers and what comes next for the podcast.
[3] popular app.
[4] It's March 25th, and this is a Saturday extra edition of Morning Wire.
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[13] Here to discuss this week's congressional hearings and all the TikTok controversy is Kara Frederick, director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation.
[14] Hi, Kara.
[15] So what were some of the key takeaway moments from this week's testimony?
[16] Yeah, I think the key takeaway moments are the fact that Congress members came very well prepared.
[17] They were clearly articulating the threat, the fact that TikTok's parent company, bite dances, headquartered in China, and subject to the People's Republic of China's laws and policies, and therefore liable to be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
[18] So I was impressed mostly with the members of Congress.
[19] The TikTok CEO, not so much.
[20] There's clearly a history of equivocation and misrepresentation when it comes to TikTok as a company and their practices and their behavior, and I didn't see anything different from the CEO that contrasted with previous public pronouncements and the facts.
[21] Yeah, tell us about some of the angles we saw from lawmakers in their questioning.
[22] Yeah, so there's a couple angles here.
[23] I think the biggest one is, you know, this is effectively a surveillance app that's beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.
[24] And the lawmakers know that TikTok was used or was intended to be used for surveillance purposes by employees at ByteDance in China who had blessed off on a potential operation to target the physical locations of U .S. journalists.
[25] So one of those angles is, okay, there's a surveillance capability here that is, by all intents and purposes, going to be used by China -based employees.
[26] And then, again, there's the China national security angle.
[27] I also think there's a potential propaganda angle here that lawmakers are aware of, as well as, you know, the impact on children.
[28] So, you know, the unique algorithm can effectively be tailored to specific individuals and their digital profiles based off of how it works, the sort of attributes in terms of working off of engagement rather than friend networks and can serve up bespoke, tailored campaigns to your children.
[29] And I think lawmakers did a good job in talking about a lot of those angles.
[30] What are TikTok's current privacy practices?
[31] Oh, yeah, they're extremely invasive.
[32] And you'll hear a common retort where people say, okay, how is this different from certain social media applications owned by American companies?
[33] And I'd say the main difference is TikTok works overtime to obfuscate their anti -privacy practices, their surveillance practices.
[34] We know from a cybersecurity company called Internet 2 .0, which ran a malware analysis tool on TikTok, that it scored among the worst in the industry.
[35] They had a 60 % score where they said, hey, this platform is effectively a data collector, and that's what it does.
[36] We know from the Wall Street Journal's investigation that they used a loophole in Google's privacy policy to collect the unique device identifiers.
[37] They're called media access control addresses, Mac addresses, for at least 15 months.
[38] It's very difficult to change those unique identifiers, and TikTok was hoovering up that information by exploiting a loophole.
[39] and the Wall Street Journal found that they had a layer of encryption where they tried to conceal what they were doing.
[40] So they're going to great lengths in order to obfuscate some of these surveillance practices.
[41] And if you're a good actor, you don't do that.
[42] During the testimony, TikTok CEO mentioned something called Project Texas.
[43] What will that do?
[44] Yep.
[45] So Project Texas, they advertise it as putting up more friction between American data and the ability of say Chinese engineers in ByteDance to access this data.
[46] It purports to give Sipheus the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States oversight capabilities as well as American companies oversight capabilities on these data privacy measures.
[47] But just storing data in America and in Singapore in some instances is not a solution.
[48] It's a half measure because that doesn't deal with an aspect of tech policy where the Chinese Communist Party could potentially have leverage over people with access to the data.
[49] So if you have, say, a engineer who's in America with family members back in China and the CCP wants to lean on those family members, then, you know, China has been known to do such things to the Chinese diaspora in the past.
[50] So I don't think you're eliminating the national security threat or the data privacy issues just by saying you're going to store this information in America or Singapore.
[51] Is the hope here that TikTok is essentially purchased by an American company?
[52] That's an incomplete solution.
[53] In my estimation, that's a half measure because ByteDance a while ago said that they would not give up the source code if there was a sale to an American company, and China confirmed that very recently.
[54] So there's not going to be much change if there's a sale because China's not going to give up the source code.
[55] So that, to me, is a completely ineffective measure when contending with the TikTok problem.
[56] A wholesale ban from operations in the U .S. market is the only solution to protect our data and, frankly, to protect our children.
[57] What about the economics of this?
[58] Are there potential economic strains that could result from banning TikTok?
[59] I think there would be good economic effects for this because it would encourage American innovators to get more competitive, to build platforms that can effectively, you know, do better than they think TikTok did.
[60] So I think it can only engender competition, which is a good thing because a lot of these companies are sort of salivating over the algorithm and trying to attempt to create the algorithm.
[61] There's, again, a line of reasoning that says, you know, small businesses are going to be harmed.
[62] But I think it's much better when you have American businesses running the show, when you are able to, you know, tell these creators that, okay, if you want to use a platform, don't use one that's beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.
[63] So I think this is all in the broader context of onshoreing some of our, you know, most vital areas like with, you know, COVID -19, we came to realize we need to produce PPE here.
[64] We need to have more fabs for semiconductors here in the United States.
[65] So we need to decouple from China and bring back industry to America so that we're not at risk.
[66] This is just a small microcosm of that greater movement.
[67] And I think the economic benefits, you might take a small hit, but in the end, It's going to redound to America's benefit, and that is a great thing.
[68] Now, we've had some organizations, 16 of them, including the ACLU and Tully Center for Free Speech, who wrote letters against a ban saying it has freedom of expression implications.
[69] What's their argument?
[70] Yeah, their argument is this hurts our First Amendment rights.
[71] And, you know, part of a view where, you know, this is a private company and the government shouldn't get involved.
[72] But I think those arguments are nullified by the fact that there's that C .S. P -CP connection that's very clear for this platform.
[73] So when you're having a national security concern, I think that sort of obviates, you know, everything that they're trying to say.
[74] And it's the reason why President Trump and a lot of these legislators are coming out with potential fixes by sort of closing these loopholes that the Berman Amendment offers, and this is to the AIPA authority.
[75] So it basically says, hey, the president does have broad authority.
[76] to contend with national security threats of this nature.
[77] And when it comes to the First Amendment, I think where are these groups when it comes to these big tech platforms and how they've been colluding with the government to silence the speech of Americans?
[78] I'm not really seeing them cry out about those infringements.
[79] So those arguments, I think, carry a little less water because they're so inconsistent.
[80] Some of the defenders of TikTok point to how popular it is with kids as a reason to protect it.
[81] Critics point to the same thing as the reason to crack down.
[82] Any merits to the popularity argument, or is that really an argument against it?
[83] So we haven't really seen this before, and we know, again, from Pew Research two years ago, that pre -teens, 30 % of 9 to 11 -year -olds, their parents claim that they use the platform.
[84] We also know that studies from Britain say that toddlers are now starting to get exposed to TikTok content and high percentages.
[85] There have been a number of organic studies that places like the New York Post, the Daily Mail have conducted by registering as teenage users, 13 and 14 -year -old users.
[86] And they found that within minutes, the self -harm content and the suicidal content was a veritable onslaught.
[87] And the Wall Street Journal also did interviews among young teens saying that this is an onslaught.
[88] You have, again, the unique features of this algorithm pushing eating disorder content, pushing self -harm content, pushing suicidal content to these minors, this is new, the scale and frankly the tailored nature with which the algorithm surfaces this content to young teenage users and girls in particular is non -Prel.
[89] So this is a pervasive problem that's not going to go away.
[90] And when you have a company that is ultimately beholden to the CCP and it's China company says they're not giving up the algorithm, I don't think they're going to be resolved any time soon.
[91] The kids issue is a massive issue.
[92] Last question.
[93] You've talked about how China has responded refusing to give up the source code.
[94] Where does this go from here?
[95] What do we expect will be the next moves from China and U .S. lawmakers?
[96] Yeah, so I think China, I think bite dance, I think TikTok, what they're going to do is they're going to keep shoveling money to their lobbyists who are going to traips around the halls of the hill trying to appeal to maybe the free market impulses of some of these legislatures or the fact that this is a platform that is used by a lot of Democrats and a lot of lawmakers.
[97] So you're going to see, I believe, the lobbying efforts intensify.
[98] You're going to see certain policymakers potentially not recognize the national security issues or at least ignore them.
[99] But hopefully the momentum will carry over the bipartisan momentum, like with Senator Warner, the companion bill to Senator Rubio's bill in the House that has Democratic.
[100] and Republican support.
[101] So I think if we can carry the momentum that, you know, a federal ban on government devices has set off, then I think will be in a better place to eventually ban the app.
[102] But nothing is going to get resolved until that happens.
[103] Well, a highly influential platform here, so it's important that it's being looked at closely.
[104] Kara, thanks for joining us.
[105] That was Heritage Tech Policy Center director, Kara Frederick, and this has been a Saturday extra edition of Morning Wire.