Told U.S. security at risk, Chinese firm seeks to sell Grindr dating app
reuters.com
reuters.com
Seems really quite plausible to me.
Not sure how this works as far as who should or shouldn't own these companies but there is some potential utility there, with very very little cost.
Lots of things you would think are disqualifying aren't, as long as you disclose them (being involved with BDSM is the most obvious answer I'm aware of).
The fact that they're LGBT isn't the issue with the repeal of don't ask don't tell. But if they're not out and they don't disclose then yes, this information is absolutely valuable.
Money stuff is another disqualifying event. If you're heavily in debt then you're vulnerable to being paid off in exchange for something against the interests of the United States.
If only someone did something in the last few years that would make this data super valuable. Like if Chinese intelligence broke into the US governments HR system and absconded with the data (including all their personal information including where they live).
Oh wait...
Also, it's not just about orientation, it's also about affairs, or adjacency to related petty crimes, which make these people vulnerable to blackmail in private and U.S. security life. e.g. a Chinese asset and you hit it off, maybe take some ecstasy or do something you didn't want your husband/boyfriend to know about, and they have it on video. Maybe it's still doable even if the database itself is not compromised, but probably more expensive and time consuming.
Added: Most Americans' home addresses (usually all of them, going back decades), phone numbers (again, usually all of them, going back decades), and birthdates are available in several privately owned publicly searchable databases which you have to specifically tell not to list these things. DoD broadly, and the Air Force, Army, and Navy at least all instruct personnel to ask that their information be delisted from these databases. Let's say you search for Grindr phone numbers and names in these databases, and find all the people who are not listed. That would be a pretty good start if you're looking for vulnerable people.
While I don't have the knowledge to confirm or deny this, I find it pretty lenient of the US not only because it's only a year, but also because it's open enough about it. Keeping in mind Aurora and the Lockheed Martin F35 hack, and that national security opposing a superpower is not a problem that solves itself, I find it does not undermine American values or freedoms.
It's a question of whether or not you or your spouse have ongoing relationships with Chinese nationals and could, as a result, be subject to influence by the Chinese government.
If you were married to someone who, say, had fled China and had no connection to anyone there, that's likely to be fine. If you're married to someone who has a whole extended family back in China and visits them four times a year, well, that's pretty obviously a potential vulnerability that's going to be considered as part of a background investigation.
It's not a question of ethnicity or race, it's a question of having avenues of influence by a foreign government.
Don’t get it twisted. It’s just racism.
I'd also refute the idea that nationality is a proxy for race, especially for a country as large and diverse as China. China is _far_ from the only nation with an Asian populace--many of the ethnicities in China can be found in neighboring countries and across Asia.
The residents of those various places, as I understand things, see it differently.
I feel like the reception would be different if we were talking about "woke-friendly" demographics.
But that aside, I hear you. My major confusion is that I never see the woke crowd running in to get super sensitive about things like this when the topic is Chinese people. I feel like they'd lose their shit if we were talking about Arabs, for example.
Just like race, one has no say in where they were born. You don’t get to arbitrarily change it if you don’t like the one that was assigned to you by the people with the most arms in the region in which you happen to be born.
Discriminating based on citizenship status is usually illegal, but US security clearance is typically contingent on being a US citizen. The relevant anti-discrimination laws have an exemption for "national security purposes"
So, the latter: they get a free pass to do racial and national origin discrimination. That was my answer, thank you.
Its about allegiance to a country. Not your race.
If you come to the US from China, revoke your Chinese citizenship, become a US citizen and limit your contact to Chinese citizens, you can get a security clearance.
Also a security clearance is not a right.
Also vulnerability to manipulation. So you'll be denied if you're heavily in debt and have a gambling problem, even if you're absolutely loyal and patriotic.
You would think people would know better but if you ever get bored and decided to browse clearance rejection decisions you see dozens of people losing their clearance each year because they looked at porn on their work computer.
1. There was a man who loved his dog in a way that one is not supposed to love a dog.
2. There were a couple people who liked crotch ventilation while riding around on a motorcycle.
The reason being that otherwise there's nothing stopping you from renouncing your citizenship, stealing the secrets, and defecting in exchange for being granted citizenship again.
Eg Uighurs aren’t referred to as Chinese when they emigrate abroad like Han are, even though they are both supposedly Chinese when citizens of the PRC. In that case, if I married a Uighur with a PRC passport, my security clearance would still be in jeapordy, if I married a Chinese (Han) or Uighur with a Canadian passport, there is less of a problem depending on when/if they naturalized.
You're wrong. You should read the link forks25 posted to one of the decisions: http://ogc.osd.mil/doha/industrial/2018/16-04107.h1.pdf
I looked through some others, and here's one where a Chinese person was denied clearance on account of foreign ties: http://ogc.osd.mil/doha/industrial/2019/17-03450.a1.pdf
And here's another were someone was denied for alcoholism: http://ogc.osd.mil/doha/industrial/2019/18-00782.a1.pdf
All the reasoning seems very clear to me.
I definitely want confirmation on this. I could see the security-clearance folks being skeptical of someone who moved to mainland China to work, but not of someone who, say had a job in the US at a Chinese-owned company like AMC [1] or Riot Games [2].
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/03/18/the-biggest-american-companies...
I always thought funny how OkCupid pushes ads like "You're tired of the dirty flesh market of Tinder? We hear you! Come use OkCupid!" and they have the same owner as Tinder
And they're sufficiently different to seem like totally independent dating pools, so people are probably going to fork up cash for both even if they get ads on one of them for the other.
That said, there's nothing particularly inconsistent about having different product lines and brands for different market segments. I don't think much of any of the Swipe-to-Date apps, but lots of people seem to. Some people seem to prefer OKC. Some people would rather buy a Lexus than a Toyota, or Pizza Hut over Taco Bell.
$15 billion market cap, $1.7b in sales, $477m in profit. Only 1,400 employees. Match, despite being public, is of course roughly 80% owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC).
edit: Furthermore, what other Chinese company owns a dating site used frequently by westerners?
Regarding your edit: I didn't mean that there was another Chinese company owning a dating site used by Westerners, but that it would explain what made Grindr special if there weren't another such company.
... Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd is
seeking to sell Grindr LLC, the popular gay dating app it has
owned since 2016.
There are many users of the app who are not open about their lifestyle (“DL”)
select opm.name, opm.address
from opm_security_clearance_files opm
join grindr_users grinder
where grinder.phone_number = opm.phone_number
and opm.clearance in ('SECRET', 'TOP SECRET', 'SCI');
If any of those people are in the closet, they could be susceptible to blackmail.
Simple explanation that likely explains the security panel's reasoning behind their statements.
Also explains why a phone number as an identity token is a horrible idea.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recruitment_of_spies#Love,_hon...
Grindr is mostly used for semi-anonymous "hookups" - I am told anecdotally by people who used it and by the media at large - which is something even out and proud people might not wish the world to know (e.g. because their spouse might disprove), especially not in harsh detail. A lot of the communication on grindr ought to be pretty explicit too given how it gets used, something you might not want to see made public either, even if you're out of the closet already.
Now the other theoretical site might be as "bad" or even more so as grindr (the fetish website you suggested), or it might be a "tame" website used mostly in a "tame" manner, which of course still has "potential" to a blackmailer, but less so than the grindrs, tinders, backpages, adultfriendfrinders, etc of this world.
why would grindr have that? Hell, they dont even validate the random string you can put in the email field
>The development represents a rare, high-profile example of CFIUS undoing an acquisition that has already been completed. Kunlun took over Grindr through two separate deals between 2016 and 2018 without submitting the acquisition for CFIUS review, according to the sources, making it vulnerable to such an intervention.
People are starting to wake up to the fact that china won't stop until the west stops it.
Makes sense.
My understanding was they make a recommendations and then the POTUS makes the final call, even if that might be to let CFIUS's decision stand by not making a call.
I heard from some folks in an acquisition by a foreign company going through an acquisition that they got a lot of pressure from CFIUS with requests for more and more data, and they were pretty sure the deal would be blocked. They expected the process to last months more anyway, and then... someone visited the VP and POTUS one day, took some photos, and it was automagiclly approved. The understanding was that if it was up to the POTUS anyway and he liked it, process over.
That information could be used to discern the locations of military personnel.
How would that work? Even if the app doesn't collect data now, it could always be modified to collect data later. The problem isn't so much the data they collect, but the users they have.
Avoiding the collection of personal data only mitigates against actors who can only access data passively, like in data breach events. It doesn't mitigate against actors who can initiate active collection of data.
I think the theory that it's about potential blackmail and extortion is a more likely explanation, and overall I think it makes sense for the government to take this action, but it might have been boosted by ulterior motives (see also CNN/AT&T/Time Warner).
"Same-sex couples are unable to marry or adopt, and households headed by such couples are ineligible for the same legal protections available to opposite-sex couples." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_China