Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland, Diamond,
Speaker 1: executive producer at iHeartRadio. And how the tech are you.
Speaker 1: It is time for the tech News for Tuesday, July eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and we've got several stories relating to
Speaker 1: TikTok and the ongoing concerns about whether that app poses
Speaker 1: as a national security threat to various countries and up. First,
Speaker 1: US lawmakers are looking to amend a proposed law that
Speaker 1: would give the US president broad powers to ban TikTok
Speaker 1: in the United States as well as other Chinese made apps. Already,
Speaker 1: we've seen bans for various federal and state agencies here
Speaker 1: that you are not supposed to install TikTok on a
Speaker 1: government owned device in a lot of these places. But
Speaker 1: this legislation would give the president the authority to block
Speaker 1: transactions that would allow foreign companies to even build out
Speaker 1: information and communications infrastructure here in the United States. And
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, this actually mirrors how the
Speaker 1: US treated radio way back in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: As the First World War escalated, US authorities seized radio
Speaker 1: broadcast assets, essentially radio stations that had previously been under
Speaker 1: the ownership of companies that had a foreign parent company,
Speaker 1: namely the British Marconi Company. So after the war, the
Speaker 1: US declined to return those assets to those foreign companies,
Speaker 1: concerned that it might not be a good idea to
Speaker 1: allow a company that's native to some other country to
Speaker 1: own and operate telecommunications infrastructure within America. So this legislation
Speaker 1: is taken kind of a similar approach. I think the
Speaker 1: legislation was introduced in early spring, but according to Senator
Speaker 1: Mark Warner, TikTok quote spent one hundred million dollars in
Speaker 1: lobbying and slowed a bit of our momentum end quote.
Speaker 1: But this proposal is still on the table. I think
Speaker 1: the main concern among critics is that the law would
Speaker 1: expand the president's powers in ways that could have negative
Speaker 1: consequences down the road, which is a reasonable concern that
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that whatever solution you're proposing
Speaker 1: doesn't end up being worse than whatever the perceived problem is. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: down Under in Australia, the country's leaders are grilling TikTok
Speaker 1: executives about the company's operations as well as an incident
Speaker 1: that happened last December, and that incident was when Byteedance
Speaker 1: admitted Bye Dance being the parent company to TikTok. It
Speaker 1: admitted that some of its employees had tracked journalists and
Speaker 1: these were journalists who were covering TikTok, and apparently this
Speaker 1: was in an attempt to cross reference the journalist's locations
Speaker 1: with byte Dance employees in an effort to track down
Speaker 1: whistleblowers or leaks. The TikTok representatives said that while that
Speaker 1: incident did happen, the employees who did the tracking did
Speaker 1: so without the knowledge or direction of the company itself,
Speaker 1: So their explanation is that these employees went rogue. In
Speaker 1: other words, some of the Australian leaders became frustrated with
Speaker 1: the TikTok representatives and accused them of obfuscation. At one point,
Speaker 1: a TikTok rep said she could not say for certain
Speaker 1: where Byte Dance's quote unquote formal headquarters were. That led
Speaker 1: Senator James Patterson to say, are you seriously not able
Speaker 1: to say how your parent company, which ultimately owns and
Speaker 1: controls you, is operated? So I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that TikTok isn't doing any favors for itself in
Speaker 1: the attempt to walk a little tightrope here to try
Speaker 1: and answer questions without making themselves seem guilty. But also
Speaker 1: the company reps are in a pretty tough position because
Speaker 1: a lot of places around the world have already worked
Speaker 1: with the presumption that TikTok is guilty, and therefore they're
Speaker 1: looking for any bit of evidence that backs up that assumption. Now,
Speaker 1: back here in the United States, Clemson University announced this
Speaker 1: week that no one will be able to access TikTok
Speaker 1: through the campus network. So if your device connects to
Speaker 1: either Clemson University's wired network or its Wi Fi, you
Speaker 1: would find access to TikTok blocked. Of course, you could
Speaker 1: swap to a cellular network and still access it. I
Speaker 1: assume you could also use a VPN and still access it,
Speaker 1: but campus provided internet would be a non starter. The
Speaker 1: ban began yesterday, and the reason Clemson gave her the
Speaker 1: band was to quote unquote protect the integrity of information
Speaker 1: and resources. So with that wording, my guess is that
Speaker 1: this concern may relate to worries that TikTok could serve
Speaker 1: as sort of a carrier for other types of code
Speaker 1: that could be used to exploit networks. I can't say
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean, maybe they're just worried that someone's
Speaker 1: gonna do a TikTok dance in front of some sensitive
Speaker 1: records that relate to Clemson University. I don't know. News
Speaker 1: stories like the ones I have just mentioned probably contributed
Speaker 1: to our next story. And that is according to a
Speaker 1: survey that the Few Research Center conducted, about fifty nine
Speaker 1: percent of Americans see TikTok as a threat to national
Speaker 1: security in the United States. Some of them think it
Speaker 1: is a major threat, others feel it's more like a
Speaker 1: minor threat. The survey found that conservatives were more likely
Speaker 1: to see TikTok as being dangerous. There there was something
Speaker 1: like a seventy percent of conservatives said so. And also
Speaker 1: they found that the older the person was, the more
Speaker 1: likely they were to feel TikTok is a risk. I
Speaker 1: am guessing there's probably a correlation between people who have
Speaker 1: had little to no experience using the app and a
Speaker 1: fear that the app could potentially serve as a threat
Speaker 1: to national security, though I don't think the survey directly
Speaker 1: established that. It just again, it feels to me like
Speaker 1: that's probably true. I know that the survey used a
Speaker 1: fairly modest sample size of five one hundred one respondents,
Speaker 1: so the headlines that generalize this to all Americans are
Speaker 1: perhaps a little bit over zealous, and any conclusions you
Speaker 1: would draw from this survey would need to have some
Speaker 1: really big qualifiers. You need to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: one what was the size of the sample? And two
Speaker 1: how did they word the questions? And for the record,
Speaker 1: the Pew Research Center actually shares all the information so
Speaker 1: you can see that. But personally, I think the whole
Speaker 1: TikTok issue is one of those things where you can't
Speaker 1: see the forest for the trees kind of problem. I've
Speaker 1: said it a lot of times before, but it does
Speaker 1: bear repeating. Should a country be concerned about TikTok's ties
Speaker 1: to China, Well, probably, I mean that is something to
Speaker 1: be concerned about, but we shouldn't focus solely on that
Speaker 1: connection to the point where we ignore the broader problem
Speaker 1: with data brokers and data collection. As long as there
Speaker 1: are platforms that are gobbling up data and then selling
Speaker 1: it to whomever pays for it, there's a potential threat
Speaker 1: to national security. The connection may not be as blatant
Speaker 1: as a company owned by a Chinese parent company. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to set up red flags immediately, but that's
Speaker 1: just obvious, right. Even without that, the connections are still there.
Speaker 1: Even if the United States were to ban TikTok and
Speaker 1: any other Chinese based app, the data floodgates are still
Speaker 1: wide open. It does not us the problem, and that
Speaker 1: is that is something that we have to grapple with.
Speaker 1: And my fear is that TikTok ends up being an
Speaker 1: enormous distraction, that whether TikTok is a danger or not
Speaker 1: is kind of beside the point, because the danger exists
Speaker 1: whether TikTok does or doesn't, and that we can't just
Speaker 1: have it become a conversation about TikTok, because then we
Speaker 1: have the false sense of security that we're all safe
Speaker 1: even if TikTok gets wiped off the face of the planet,
Speaker 1: and that's just an incorrect assumption. On a related note,
Speaker 1: in the state of Massachusetts, legislators are proposing a law
Speaker 1: that would make it illegal for data brokers to buy
Speaker 1: and sell cellular location data. Now, this is in part
Speaker 1: an effort to protect people who seek abortions and it
Speaker 1: would keep their location data private so that some other
Speaker 1: entity can't deduce where those people have gone or what
Speaker 1: they've been up to, and that is really important here
Speaker 1: in the United States. States here in the US are
Speaker 1: aggressively criminalizing abortion in the wake of the overturning of
Speaker 1: Roe Versus Way. That includes having laws that would punish
Speaker 1: citizens who travel out of state to seek an abortion.
Speaker 1: So even if an abortion is legal somewhere else, if
Speaker 1: you're a citizen of one of those states, you would
Speaker 1: be breaking the law. So this kind of law that
Speaker 1: Massachusetts is proposing would protect people who were seeking medical
Speaker 1: help outside of their home state. The bill is called
Speaker 1: the Location Shield Act, and it would ban the buying, selling, renting, leasing,
Speaker 1: or trading of location data across the state of Massachusetts. Moreover,
Speaker 1: companies would first have to get consent from citizens before
Speaker 1: they could even collect that kind of data in the
Speaker 1: first place. They would have to have the express consent
Speaker 1: of people in Massachusetts before they do that. Companies that
Speaker 1: failed to comply with this bill, if it does become law,
Speaker 1: would face finds as well as open up the possibility
Speaker 1: of class action lawsuits against the company. Chances are pretty
Speaker 1: good that this legislation is going to be passed into
Speaker 1: law in Massachusetts. It would become a pioneer piece of
Speaker 1: legislation here in the US. Moreover, it would be a
Speaker 1: very tiny step toward oversight and regulation of the data
Speaker 1: brokerage industry, which has gone unchecked in the US for decades,
Speaker 1: And in my mind, it is the larger problem compared
Speaker 1: to the TikTok stuff that we talked about just a
Speaker 1: moment ago. I think this is a really good step.
Speaker 1: It's one of many steps that I think need to
Speaker 1: be taken in order to place some restrictions on the
Speaker 1: rampant collection and exploitation of information. That information has real value, obviously,
Speaker 1: because companies are willing to buy it, and other companies
Speaker 1: make billions of dollars by selling it. And meanwhile, we,
Speaker 1: the people who are generating the information, end up being
Speaker 1: exploited by it as opposed to profiting from it or
Speaker 1: having any control of it whatsoever. So I think that
Speaker 1: this is a good step. Okay, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsors. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we've got some more news to talk about. We're back.
Speaker 1: So the United States and the European Union have come
Speaker 1: to an agreement on data policies that will re establish
Speaker 1: transatlantic data transfers between the US and the EU, at
Speaker 1: least for the time being. So Previously, the European Union
Speaker 1: turned off the data valves and cited concerns that US
Speaker 1: intelligence officials could potentially comb through EU citizens data and
Speaker 1: that the data belonging to EU citizens would not be
Speaker 1: safe from surveillance. And that is a perfectly reasonable concern, y'all,
Speaker 1: goodness knows, there are US intelligence agencies that are dedicated
Speaker 1: to specifically doing that kind of thing, even to the
Speaker 1: extent of doing it on American citizens. Anyway, the EU
Speaker 1: demanded assurances that EU citizen data would receive the same
Speaker 1: level of protection over in the US as it does
Speaker 1: in the EU, and that US intelligence agencies will have
Speaker 1: limited access to any kind of data from the EU.
Speaker 1: This agreement, which is called the EU US Data Privacy
Speaker 1: Framework or DPF, is the third attempt to establish new
Speaker 1: safeguards that adequately meet EU concerns over citizen privacy and safety.
Speaker 1: That being said, critics of this new agreement argue that
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually make substantive changes in policy, and that
Speaker 1: inevitably there are going to be legal challenges to this
Speaker 1: new agreement, and in all likelihood it will end up
Speaker 1: getting revoked as the previous two agreements had. So what
Speaker 1: the critics are saying is that this still isn't actually
Speaker 1: enough to meet the needs of the EU and to
Speaker 1: protect EU citizens, So chances are this is a temporary
Speaker 1: fix and we'll be back to the drawing board within
Speaker 1: a year or so. Apple has pushed out some Rapid
Speaker 1: Security Response or RSR updates to address zero day vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: that hackers can use to compromise devices like iPhones, iPads,
Speaker 1: and max. This flaw is within the WebKit browser engine,
Speaker 1: so a hacker can essentially set up a web page
Speaker 1: that contains malicious content, and if you get tricked into
Speaker 1: visiting that web page, then you can end up downloading
Speaker 1: and executing some code that then allows the hacker to
Speaker 1: remotely execute code on your device, so essentially you hand
Speaker 1: over control of your device to the hacker. And once
Speaker 1: again this illustrates how it's important to keep your devices
Speaker 1: up to date with the latest security patches, and that's
Speaker 1: a good idea to allow updates to install as they
Speaker 1: become available, rather than to hold off until later. To
Speaker 1: make sure you don't become one of the victims of
Speaker 1: these kinds of schemes. CNN reports that Meta, while basking
Speaker 1: in the fact that more than one hundred million people
Speaker 1: have signed up for Threads already, has also made drastic
Speaker 1: cuts to its teams that focused on fighting misinformation and
Speaker 1: disinformation across company platforms. Now, this has caused for concern
Speaker 1: for lots of reasons, not the least of which is
Speaker 1: that the United States is heading into an election year
Speaker 1: next year, and Meta is a company with a pretty
Speaker 1: awful reputation for facilitating the spread of election misinformation and worse.
Speaker 1: After all, it was Meta's platform Facebook that took center
Speaker 1: stage during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. CNN has trouble getting
Speaker 1: firm answers to some pretty simple questions such as how
Speaker 1: many cuts to those departments have been made, or what
Speaker 1: was the size of those departments now compared to before,
Speaker 1: or even what tools do they have at their disposal
Speaker 1: to do their jobs? And the fact that there were
Speaker 1: cuts at all isn't totally surprising obviously, you know. Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: CEO of Meta, famously said that twenty twenty three is
Speaker 1: the year of efficiency for the company and that mostly
Speaker 1: seems to boil down to making massive job cuts and
Speaker 1: trying to do more with fewer people. I imagine it's
Speaker 1: easier from a corporate standpoint to make cuts to departments
Speaker 1: like content moderation and trust in safety teams because they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily contribute directly to the bottom line the way
Speaker 1: some other departments do. But as we have seen in
Speaker 1: past years, a lack of resources and policy can create
Speaker 1: massive negative consequences. So if Zuckerberg would like to avoid
Speaker 1: another future date with US Congress, it might be wise
Speaker 1: to make some investments in those departments rather than cuts.
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about Twitter in yesterday's Tech Stuff episode,
Speaker 1: but one thing I did not cover was how the
Speaker 1: company has changed its API policies. So an API is
Speaker 1: an application programming interface. This is what allows a third
Speaker 1: party developer to a tool that can tap into some
Speaker 1: other platform or software. So for Twitter, this is the
Speaker 1: interface that app developers can use if they want to
Speaker 1: create their own third party Twitter client, for example, or
Speaker 1: any other tool that sends requests or posts to Twitter.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, Twitter changed its API policy to increase
Speaker 1: the amount charged to developers for this privilege, with three
Speaker 1: different tiers. If you're at the enterprise tier, you're talking
Speaker 1: about starting at forty two thousand dollars per month, So
Speaker 1: it really depends upon which tier you're subscribed to and
Speaker 1: what the purpose is. But you are paying a good
Speaker 1: deal of money for access to the API, and yet,
Speaker 1: according to developers, the API has become unreliable and unstable
Speaker 1: this year, meaning that apps are not always functional. Twitter
Speaker 1: will make changes without clearly communicating those changes to app
Speaker 1: developers ahead of time, and it kind of breaks the app,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile the developers have to scramble to fix things.
Speaker 1: So it's not due to flaws in the apps themselves.
Speaker 1: Instead's due to problems with the API or changes to
Speaker 1: the API, and that's something that developers don't have any
Speaker 1: control over. So they're complaining that they're spending more money
Speaker 1: than ever to be able to work with Twitter, and
Speaker 1: that Twitter isn't working as well as it should a
Speaker 1: coin immashable. The problem has led to several developers abandoning
Speaker 1: Twitter altogether, which seems to be quite the trend because
Speaker 1: users and advertisers have been doing that as well. There
Speaker 1: have been countless apps and services designed to let you
Speaker 1: make notes and access them wherever you happen to be.
Speaker 1: One of the most famous is ever note, which traces
Speaker 1: its history way back to two thousand, before the era
Speaker 1: of the consumer smartphone, although you could argue that really
Speaker 1: it was the explosion of the smartphone market that made
Speaker 1: Evernote rise to prominence. But last November, a Milan based
Speaker 1: company called Bending Spoons purchased Evernote, or at least announced
Speaker 1: that it was going to, and then the acquisition was
Speaker 1: complete in early twenty twenty three. Evernote is based out
Speaker 1: of Redwood City in America, or at least it used
Speaker 1: to be, and this week news broke that Bending Spoons
Speaker 1: had laid off nearly all of Evernote's staff and the
Speaker 1: company plans to move all operations to Europe. This has
Speaker 1: prompted Evernote fans to worry about the future of the app.
Speaker 1: It's not the first time that Evernote has faced challenges.
Speaker 1: The company upset a lot of users with an overhaul
Speaker 1: to the app several years ago. A lot of users
Speaker 1: felt that the company failed to deliver upon promised features
Speaker 1: and broke a lot of stuff that they liked about Evernote,
Speaker 1: but it kind of recovered from that, although the company
Speaker 1: also held layoffs in twenty fifteen, twenty eighteen, and even
Speaker 1: as recently as twenty twenty two, and now Evernote faces
Speaker 1: a whole lot more competition in the field, so a
Speaker 1: lot of people worry that this could be the end
Speaker 1: of Evernote. And it may not be. Everynote may still
Speaker 1: be sticking around, but things are certainly looking a little
Speaker 1: dark at the moment. So here's hoping all the staff
Speaker 1: who formerly worked for Evernote are able to land on
Speaker 1: their feet. Finally, protesters in San Francisco who object to
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles have employed a reportedly effective way to paralyze
Speaker 1: self driving cars, and that's to gently place a traffic
Speaker 1: cone on the hood of the vehicle, which then will
Speaker 1: just make it sit still. The protesters, who belong to
Speaker 1: a group that calls themselves the Safe Streets Rebel, have
Speaker 1: dubbed this the Week of Cone. They object to startups
Speaker 1: that are putting more vehicles on the streets. They argue
Speaker 1: that cities should invest in making streets more pedestrian and
Speaker 1: bike friendly rather than to accommodate more vehicles. They also
Speaker 1: object to vehicles that are covered in various sensors and cameras.
Speaker 1: They have likened autonomous vehicles to being surveillance pods because
Speaker 1: in order to operate, they have to be able to
Speaker 1: survey the entire area around them, but that also poses
Speaker 1: a potential risk to privacy and security for citizens. The
Speaker 1: protests aren't meant to cause physical damage to the vehicles,
Speaker 1: but they can still create a hazard because protesters have
Speaker 1: coned cars that just have come to a stop at
Speaker 1: an intersection, and then the self driving vehicle ends up
Speaker 1: being stuck there and ends up blocking traffic. So it
Speaker 1: does have its consequences. And that's it for the news
Speaker 1: for today, Tuesday, July eleventh, twenty twenty three. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.