I've just deactivated my TikTok account.

@ebakerwhite

@ebakerwhite
"according to current and former employees, as well as internal materials reviewed by Forbes, Cloutier’s efforts to build out a robust security team were hamstrung by ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department, which is led by Song Ye, an executive in Beijing."

Holy cats.

This is a Hell of a series of articles. My hat's off to you.

@ebakerwhite

“In this case individuals misused their authority to obtain access to TikTok user data.” —TikTok General Counsel

Right. So what are you, TikTok, doing now to ensure that this data is not there in future, to tempt other “individuals”?

Firing your staff doesn't do it. Merely by collecting the identifying data on people, it's inevitably going to be used against them. You need to stop collecting that #ToxicData in the first place. When do we hear that from you, TikTok?

@ebakerwhite

“We also have very strict access controls around the type of data that they can access and where that data is stored, which is here in the United States. And we’ve also said under no circumstances would we give that data to China.” - Vanessa Papas, Tikatok COO, in testimony before Congress, in September.
Wonder if she has been removed or resigned.

@ebakerwhite I don't understand why the Internal Audit and Risk Control team at Bytedance approved the surveillance campaign and so few people were terminated.

Who holds this internal Bytedance team responsible?

@ebakerwhite "I'm shocked -- shocked I tell you -- to find there is illegal surveillance going on here."

Uh-huh.

Good work. Another reason to avoid TikTok altogether.

@ebakerwhite I don't understand why location tracking is a surprise. It's right there on the App Store.

Aren't employers required to have data safeguards in place for technology? I presume Forbes provides you with a phone and computer for work use and limits what you can install on those devices.

By all means, blame China. But recognize that many younger people use TikTok as a news source, so taking away the app reduces the flow of information and exchange of ideas.

@ebakerwhite Facial tracking and numberplate tracking, pnone tracking and payment card tracking. It does not take a genius to know that it is entirely possible for the government to know where we are each second of the day, who we are with and be able to listen in via our phones to what we are doing. This is the very sinister world that George Orwell wrote about and which seems to have come to pass. Edward Snowden also warned about the spying going on in every facet of people's lives.

It is of little surprise to find anybody any everybody can use the online tracking methods to find people.

@ebakerwhite yame as all the #PRISM collaborators aka. #GAFAM|s do.

Please take proper #consequences and don't put #Govware on your devices FFS!

@ebakerwhite @nus the problem is deeply rooted, not with just a few bad players.

"This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users."

Too late. The trust is lost already!

I'm not a fan of his this is framed as "scary Chinese people have access to Americans' data...." The more correct lens IMO is that effectively unregulated (in China buy also in the US) corporate entities are teaching down journalists reporting on them. After all, a US company like Microsoft that operates on China had the same kind of potential access to foreign nationals' private data, and we should be equally concerned about that, but somehow (i.e., because of nationalism and white supremacy) we aren't.

This is not to deligitimize the point of the article that corporations shouldn't be spying on anyone, let alone journalists trying to cover them...

@ebakerwhite

Why did you use it in the first place? It was obviously insecure.

@ebakerwhite I imagine it's very unsettling to have it confirmed, even if it's not entirely surprising. I'm sorry you've been targeted in this way. It's so creepy.

VicForests, a state-owned business in Victoria, Aust, hired a private detective to follow someone who (rightly) pointed out poor practices. They also created a "dossier" full of another critic's social media activity, just to spook them.

A government entity, in an ostensibly free society.