Joe Biden’s bizarre decision to join TikTok just months after banning his staff from the social media app could allow China to spy on his presidential campaign.
A cybersecurity expert told DailyMail.com that state-sponsored cyber attackers could potentially steal data from the president’s campaign through backdoor channels set up by its parent company.
The Biden campaign has not provided any details about how it plans to prevent TikTok’s parent company from exposing voter information to the Chinese government.
In June 2023, Biden banned nearly 4 million federal government employees from installing the app on government-owned devices.
Citing concerns about data security, politicians on both sides of the political spectrum have supported banning the app outright.
Joe Biden’s campaign joined TikTok less than a year after his administration banned federal employees from downloading the app on government devices, fearing the Chinese government could access sensitive data through backdoors.
“If the device used for content creation is connected to the campaign’s network, state-sponsored attackers could use the app to spy on other network traffic, including private emails, online meetings, and other sensitive communications.” , John Wilson, senior threat researcher at cybersecurity firm Fortra, told DailyMail.com.
“The app could record audio, video, GPS locations and a host of other valuable information,” Wilson added.
In Joe Biden’s first TikTok, he answered a series of this or that questions, including “Trump or Biden?” He replied, ‘Are you kidding?’
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance and Chinese law requires companies in the country to share user data with the government.
American politicians have expressed fears that the Chinese government could force ByteDance to disclose large amounts of data it has collected from American users.
This was one of the main reasons why the Biden administration banned the app in federal agencies, with some exceptions for law enforcement and national security reasons. It’s also the point why his political opponents are criticizing him after Sunday’s announcement.
In 2020 and 2022, the app was used to spread misinformation, a major concern in a presidential election year.
The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that a wide range of app user data is vulnerable: biometric information, location data and browsing history.
In 2022, the company admitted that it had been spying on journalists through location data.
The app may also use invasive tracking measures, including collecting users’ phone contacts; This feature appears to remain partially active even if the app is denied permission to access your contacts, as it continues to recommend users whose phone numbers are on your phone.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced a barrage of questions about tech companies’ failure to protect young social media users during a January hearing of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. about big tech and the crisis of online child sexual exploitation.
And if the president of the United States of America were handing over his cell phone data to a foreign government, that would raise national security concerns.
Crucially, Joe Biden himself is not on TikTok and the Secret Service has extremely strict rules on how the president of the United States is allowed to use a mobile phone.
Rather, the account belongs to the official rapid response department of the Biden-Harris campaign.
Last year, sources within the campaign had said that the campaign would not join TikTok due to security concerns.
((Clearly that has changed.)) duh! little obvious. Can we add information instead? Like… how many million Americans under 25 are on tiktok? how many use tiktok as their main news source etc. shows the impetus to access the application
“We are taking advanced security precautions around our devices and incorporating sophisticated security protocol to ensure security,” Biden campaign advisers said in a statement.
But the campaign has not given more details about this strategy or clarified which devices will be logged into the account. The campaign also did not clarify whether what they will try to protect is campaign data or voter data.
Beyond the federal ban, TikTok has been under investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) for several years.
“The campaign’s presence is independent and separate from the ongoing CFIUS review,” campaign representatives said.
Experts have predicted that this election season will see unprecedented levels of sophisticated digital fraud undermining the campaign, including deepfake videos and personalized disinformation powered by artificial intelligence.
Amid these concerns, the Biden campaign’s move is drawing criticism from all sides.
ByteDance has already gotten into trouble for inappropriate data use, including a $368 million fine from the European Union in September for failing to protect children who use the app. ARE THERE NO SUITS FOR SPYING?
And nearly 60 percent of Americans view TikTok as a major or minor threat to national security in the U.S., according to a Pew Research Center. survey.
Federal government officials have made clear that even though Biden’s campaign is on the app, that doesn’t mean it’s considered secure.
“Nothing has changed in terms of national security concerns, from the NSC’s perspective, about the use of TikTok on government devices,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a news conference. “That policy is still in effect.”
Kirby declined to clarify whether the White House and the campaign had communicated about the decision to launch the social media account and referred questions to the campaign.
“I don’t want to get too much into the technical and national security reasons behind that, but it does have to do with concerns about data preservation and potential misuse of that data and privacy information by foreign actors,” he said. . saying.
All that said, cybersecurity experts have long been skeptical about whether TikTok’s cybersecurity problems are worse than those of US-based companies like Meta, which also employs invasive tracking methods and has been used to spread misinformation about the elections.
There are some simple steps that can be taken to ensure that the Biden campaign’s TikTok account does not expose sensitive data, Wilson said.
“I highly recommend that the campaign use a dedicated device for content creation,” he said. ‘That device should be turned off when not in use and never used for any other purpose. ‘