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FBI Director: Communist China Can Take Control of ‘Millions’ of Americans’ Phones With TikTok

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FBI Director Chris Wray stunned U.S. senators during a Wednesday hearing when he revealed that the Chinese Communist Party has the ability to take control of “millions” of Americans’ phones through the wildly popular TikTok app.

“If you look at the Chinese government’s gobbling up of information and data, and then the use of AI and other tools, ultimately supercomputing, things like that, to marshal all that data to conduct targeting for espionage, targeting for IP theft, targeting for the all the things that I and others on this panel have been calling out about the Chinese government,” Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Data is the coin of the realm, those who have the best information have the power and that’s what that enables them to do.”

Wray noted that China’s Equifax hack allowed them to illegally obtain through theft the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) of nearly half the population of the United States.

“So it’s the control of the data to conduct all sorts of big data operations,” he said. “It’s the control of the recommendation algorithm, which allows them to conduct influence operations. It’s the control of the software, which allows them to then have access to millions of devices. So you put all those three things together, and again, come back to the starting point, which is, this is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government and it to me screams out with national security concerns.” (Read more from “FBI Director: Communist China Can Take Control of ‘Millions’ of Americans’ Phones With TikTok” HERE)

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GOP Rep.: Chinese-Owned TikTok Is ‘Digital Fentanyl’ Poisoning Youth

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Republican Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher compared TikTok to “digital fentanyl” amid efforts to ban the app in the U.S.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Gallagher blasted the Chinese-owned social media platform for the negative effects it has on children and teens in the country, and the copious amounts of data it collects. He called for Congress to ban the app nationwide.

“I think the comparison is apt for at least two reasons,” said Gallagher. “One, it’s highly addictive and destructive and we’re seeing troubling data about the corrosive impact of constant social media use, particularly on young men and women here in America.”

“It’s also digital fentanyl in the sense that, as you allude to, it ultimately goes back to the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok is owned by ByteDance; ByteDance is effectively controlled by the CCP. So, we have to ask whether we want the CCP to control what is on the cusp of becoming the most powerful media company in America,” Gallagher continued. “That is very troubling. And so, I was glad to see my colleagues in the Senate pass, in unanimous fashion, a ban of TikTok on government devices. I think we should do the same in the House and expand that ban nationally.” (Read more from “GOP Rep.: Chinese-owned TikTok Is ‘Digital Fentanyl’ Poisoning Youth” HERE)

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TikTok Will Be Banned on Government Devices

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The Chinese-owned social-media app TikTok will be banned on federal-government devices after the omnibus bill takes effect.

National Review recently editorialized in favor of banning the CCP-compromised app from operating in the United States. Earlier this month Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Republican congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin introduced a bill that would do just that[.] (Read more from “TikTok Will Be Banned on Government Devices” HERE)

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Governor Blocks State Employees From Downloading TikTok

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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem ordered state government employees to stop using TikTok.

Noem signed an Executive Order Tuesday to ban government officials in the state from using the Chinese social media app over growing security concerns. The order takes effect immediately, and bans all state government employees and contractors from downloading the app on government devices. TikTok has been the subject of growing concerns in recent months about data privacy and security risks it poses, particularly to government officials.

“South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us,” Noem said in a statement Tuesday. “The Chinese Communist Party uses information that it gathers on TikTok to manipulate the American people, and they gather data off the devices that access the platform.”

“Because of our serious duty to protect the private data of South Dakota citizens, we must take this action immediately,” Noem added. “I hope other states will follow South Dakota’s lead, and Congress should take broader action, as well.”

Other officials in South Dakota have previously sounded the alarm about the harm the app inflicts on American children and students. (Read more from “Governor Blocks State Employees From Downloading TikTok” HERE)

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Top Democrat: ‘Trump Was Right’ About TikTok, Parents Must Get Kids off App

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Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) praised former President Donald Trump on Sunday for recognizing the threat posed by TikTok, warning that parents should be “very concerned” about their children using the app.

Warner issued the warning during a Fox News Sunday appearance after being asked about the Beijing-owned social media giant, which has become a national security concern over its ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Trump ordered ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, to divest from the platform’s US operations or see the app banned nationwide in mid-2020. The Biden administration is trying to reach a security agreement with ByteDance to avoid such a ban, but bipartisan fear has grown that TikTok cannot be truly separated from its country of origin.

“Well, I think Donald Trump was right. I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat,” Warner told host Shannon Bream. “It’s a threat on two levels.”

One problem, the Senate Intel chief warned, is that TikTok is “a massive collector of information, oftentimes of our children. They can visualize even down to your keystrokes. So, if you’re a parent and you got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned. All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing. (Read more from “Top Democrat: ‘Trump Was Right’ About TikTok, Parents Must Get Kids off App” HERE)

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TikTok Has a Child Pornography and Chinese Espionage Problem: Report

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TikTok allegedly has child sex abuse material hiding in plain sight all over the social media platform, according to a Forbes investigative report.

According to the report, graphic social media content depicting lewd and pornographic acts from minors is easy to come across on the video-sharing app.

“They typically read like advertisements and come from seemingly innocuous accounts,” Forbes reports. “But often, they’re portals to illegal child sexual abuse material quite literally hidden in plain sight—posted in private accounts using a setting that makes it visible only to the person logged in.”

The grotesque material can be found in “post-in-private” accounts, which predators easily access using specific phrases to avoid algorithms that would lead to a violation.

According to Forbes, Seara Adair, child sexual abuse survivor and children’s safety advocate, told a TikTok employee that she believes users bypass the AI system by posting a few seconds of a black screen. (Read more from “TikTok Has a Child Pornography and Chinese Espionage Problem: Report” HERE)

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China Is Attempting to Influence Us Kids by Offering an ‘Opium Version’ of TikTok, Expert Says

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The Chinese government offers its children a more limited, beneficial version of the popular app TikTok than the “opium version” offered to kids in the United States, an expert said in a recent report.

Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, told “60 Minutes” Saturday that, according to TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, the version of TikTok given to Chinese consumers provides children with a vastly different experience. The Chinese equivalent of TikTok, Douyin, gives kids under 14 years old a 40-minute daily limit and serves them patriotic and educational content.

“They don’t ship that version of TikTok to the rest of the world,” Harris said. “It’s almost like they recognize that technology’s influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the U.S. and the rest of the world.”

(Read more from “China Is Attempting to Influence Us Kids by Offering an ‘Opium Version’ of TikTok, Expert Says” HERE)”

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TikTok Admits Its Chinese Staff Can Access User Data in Other Countries

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Chinese-owned video app TikTok admitted that its staff in China has the ability to access the private accounts data in the United Kingdom and the European Union.

This comes after years of criticism from around the world, particularly in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States over concerns that personal information could be passed on to the Chinese government.

The app is coming under intense scrutiny by government authorities in the West, as its parent company, ByteDance, repeatedly denies that it is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The social media company released a press statement on Nov. 2, stating that its “privacy policy” was “based on a demonstrated need to do their job.”

TikTok said in its statement that the policy applies to “the European economic area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland.” (Read more from “TikTok Admits Its Chinese Staff Can Access User Data in Other Countries” HERE)

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Trump Was Right on TikTok, Says Top Democrat Senator

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One of the Democratic Party’s leading figures, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who is head of the United States Senate intelligence committee, has said former President Donald Trump was right when it came to the security risks around the Chinese-owned TikTok.

“This is not something you would normally hear me say, but Donald Trump was right on TikTok years ago,” said Warner during a visit to Australia, reported The Sydney Moring Herald on Oct. 25.

“If your country uses Huawei, if your kids are on TikTok, if your population uses WeChat as a social media platform, the ability for China to have undue influence is, I think, a much greater challenge and a much more immediate threat than any kind of actual, armed conflict.”

Warner, who is currently in Australia to engage with local intelligence chiefs, politicians, and business people, also warned about the technological domination that the Chinese regime is exerting over other countries, calling it scary.

“China having this kind of technology domination in a number of countries ought to scare the heck out of us because we’ve seen the kind of Orwellian surveillance state they’ve already created within China,” he said. (Read more from “Trump Was Right on TikTok, Says Top Democrat Senator” HERE)

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WATCH: Non-binary Teacher Takes to TikTok to Ask Whether There Is a Non-binary Form of the Term ‘Ma’am’

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Libs of TikTok shared a video in which an individual, who apparently teaches somewhere in Texas and identifies as non-binary, asked whether there is a non-binary equivalent for the term “ma’am.”

The individual’s TikTok account includes a description that says, “Your local non-binary Math Teacher.” The account also includes the pronouns “They/Them.”

“I’ve come out to my students,” the teacher noted in the video. The person went on to say that a student had inquired about what language should be used, noting that referring to the teacher by saying “yes ma’am” or “yes” both seemed disrespectful.

The teacher, who noted in the video that the terms “ma’am” and “sir” are used to show respect, asked in the TikTok video whether there is a non-binary version.

“Open discussion welcome in the comments #teacher #nonbinary #enby,” the TikTok post states.

(Read more from “Non-binary Teacher Takes to TikTok to Ask Whether There Is a Non-binary Form of the Term ‘Ma’am’” HERE)

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