What’s the problem with TikTok? It’s a harder question to answer than it seems. The social video app, which has joined Facebook/Instagram, YouTube and Twitter in the list of societally important social networks, is frequently spoken about with an air of suspicion, and it’s not hard to guess why: the app’s Chinese roots loom large in the conversation. (ByteDance, which owns TikTok, insists that it is headquartered in the Cayman Islands, one of the only instances I’ve seen of a company deciding that loudly proclaiming its paper HQ is located…
Tag: Internet
Elon, Twitter is not the town square – it’s just a private shop. The square belongs to us all | John Naughton
On Friday 8 January 2021, Twitter kicked Donald Trump off its platform and an eerie calm enveloped parts of our global public sphere. Depriving him of his online megaphone was a compelling demonstration of how a tech platform had acquired an awesome power – the ability effectively to silence an elected president. But what kind of power is it really? Many years ago, in a landmark book, Power: A Radical View, the sociologist Steven Lukes wrote that power comes in three varieties: the ability to stop people doing what they…
MPs criticise cyber agency for not aiding China rights group after it was hacked
Members of a cross-party China human rights group have accused Britain’s cybersecurity agency of “failing to respond” with help after their website was taken offline this week in an attack they fear came from Beijing. MPs from the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) said the incident took place on Tuesday, days after the group had said publicly it was “deeply disturbed” by reports that an Anglo-Chinese lawyer had been trying to improperly influence parliamentarians in the UK. They complained the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) did not engage or…
Cyber review warns UK and west in ‘clash of values’ with Russia and China
Britain and the west are becoming embroiled in a “clash of values” with Russia and China over the rules governing the internet, ministers and spy chiefs have warned in the UK’s first national cyber review published since 2016. Threats to the UK in cyberspace are “evolving and diversifying” they added, and argued that Britain has to improve its offensive cyber capabilities – and its wider digital skills base – to meet the challenge. “Cyberspace will become more contested as state and non-state actors seek strategic advantage,” the review said, with…
India to ban private cryptocurrencies and launch official digital currency
The Indian government is preparing to ban private cryptocurrencies and allow the country’s central bank to launch an official digital currency. The proposed legislation follows a crackdown on cryptocurrencies in China, where financial regulators and the central bank have made all digital currency transactions illegal. The Indian proposals were flagged in a parliamentary bulletin listing upcoming legislation which included one paragraph on “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021”. The accompanying description of the bill appeared to leave some room for using cryptocurrencies, however. “To create a…
At least 13 phone firms hit by suspected Chinese hackers since 2019, say experts
At least 13 phone companies around the world have been compromised since 2019 by sophisticated hackers who are believed to come from China, a cybersecurity expert group has said. The roaming hackers – known as LightBasin – were able to “search and find” individual mobile phones and “target accordingly”, according to CrowdStrike, a group regularly cited by western intelligence. Hackers were also able to obtain personal subscriber information held by phone companies and metadata showing who made and received calls. “Sophisticated signals intelligence activity” aimed at phone company networks has…