Posted on 11/28/2022 6:52:09 AM PST by SoConPubbie
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 U.S. 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.
TOM COTTON: DELETE TIKTOK, THEN GET A NEW PHONE
"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 Intelligence 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."
Warner continued by questioning "the idea that we can somehow separate out TikTok from the fact that the actual engineers writing the code in Beijing."
"The Justice Department is trying to come up with a solution, I'm going to take a look at that solution, but they've got a huge mountain to climb."
"The second problem is that TikTok, in a sense, is a broadcasting network," the Virginia Democrat then explained. "And TikTok, at the end of the day, has to be reliant on the Communist Party, the China law states that."
The consequences of this, Warner said, could include Beijing censoring content critical of China while increasing "the content that your kids may be seeing saying: 'Hey, you know, Taiwan really is part of China.' That is a distribution model that would make RT or Sputnik or some of the Russian propaganda models pale in comparison."
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Warner's interview Sunday took place moments after an appearance from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on the program, where he also discussed concerns about the Chinese social media company and its influence in the West. Cotton, who serves with Warner on the Intelligence Committee, was asked about his suggestion on Thursday that people who use TikTok delete the app from their phone and get a new phone if possible.
"There have been reports indicating that that data is accessible in mainland China. That TikTok, a Chinese company, is subject to communist China's laws and that TikTok is one of the most massive surveillance programs ever, especially on America's young people," Cotton told Bream. "That it's not just the contents you upload to TikTok but all the data on your phone and other apps, all your personal information, even facial imagery, even where your eyes are looking on your phone."
A democrat is concerned about Tik-Tok???
What’s up with that?
It’s a trap somehow…
Trump was right about more than just TikTok.
No 5h!t sherlock.......a little slow on the uptake aren’t ya?....like most moron libs.
Also, Trump was right about a lot of things he’ll never be given credit for.
How dare the Chinese spy on Americans - leave that to Biden lackey companies like google and Facebook.
We can’t let the Chinese know about Emma’s two-timing male friend.
We’ve got to stop Xi from collecting evidence of American decadence.
“even where your eyes are looking on your phone.”
Some company’s patent rights are possibly being infringed.
Correct. He is a lousy judge of whom to bring into his inner circle, but his assessment of china and what is needed to fix America's economy remains spot on.
Amamzon, Google and Facebook have been using eye tracking with test users for more than a decade and hold many us patents around generation of usability statistics. They generate heat maps of 1, 5 and 10 seconds after page render attempting to determine why pages are sticky and why pages are clickthrough. A hardware light on camera power on is something that smart phones long dropped because of the face unlock features.
If the senate is interested in anything it is because one of their corporate donors is concerned Xi Corp is stepping in on their exclusive market.
I just listened to a report on a local conservative news station about the fact that since Clinton, there have been Chinese scientists, many in the PLA, working at U.S. labs at MILITARY BASES as well as universities and making trips back to China. Fauci had a hand in that, it was reported.
WHY HAS THIS BEEN ALLOWED TO HAPPEN IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND THEN CONTINUED FOR DECADES? It amounts to one huge sleeper cell. We have some truly royal dumba____s for leaders here!
Lying Mark will be up for election in the next few years, so we can expect all kinds of conservative ideas from that evil, back stabbing freak, who controlled the Senate Intelligence Committee even when the Rs were the majority.
This simply means that some scandalous info (probably corroboration with China and the DNC on election GOTV) is coming out and the Dems need an out before it’s revealed.
Ain't that the truth?
He is a Democract....we know of their interest in children.
The bad orange man was right about a great number of things.
But he was only right because the Russians told him. /s
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