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Comment by ed25519FUUU | Hacker News Reader

According to Chinese law, the government can quietly demand any information they want on anyone. A warrant in China? Hah.

All they have to do is say "Give us the data stored on GCP host" and TikTok is legally obligated to comply.

To be fair, it's not much different than in the United States unless the data belongs to a US citizen, which is why many companies are attempting to domicile cloud data in their own country.

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The Chinese National Intelligence Law applies to any and every company operating in China right now, including Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, etc., not just TikTok.

Ironically enough, Google is one of the few major tech companies that can't be compelled to hand over information to China.

> Ironically enough, Google is one of the few major tech companies that can't be compelled to hand over information to China.

Interestingly enough, Google gets bashed most on HN than all the other companies in this list combined.

And Apple get lauded for its privacy efforts. If you point out the hypocrisy, you quickly get down voted.

There is some difference though. You can turn off iCloud and then device lock an Apple phone and make it rather secure. No such option exists for an Android phone. I agree with your general idea though, but I want to nuance. Apple gets too much credit for their privacy efforts, and Google gets too little shit.

Apples efforts only look good compared to Amazon, Google and Microsoft, but that's because they are so bad.

Android does not have an iCloud equivalent, so naturally Android is not going to have a setting to disable sharing cloud data with the Chinese government. Google Drive doesn't work in China because Google isn't kowtowing the way Apple is.

Both are PRISM partners so meh.

Just a small correction, Facebook is also not in China, IIRC.

It lead to some truly fantastic moments with Zuck grandstanding while every other company was being bashed for bowing down to China last year. Truly bizarro world.

The subsidiaries of these companies are subject to the intelligence law and whatever data these subsidiaries owns. If apple keeps US data away from the apple subsidiary in China then Apple is physically impossible to hand the data to Chinese government

Apple keeps data in China. [1] They specifically made the move because of China's National Intelligence Law. [2]

>To comply with the law, for instance, Apple announced that it would transfer the operation of iCloud in Mainland China to a government-sponsored data company named Guizhou-Cloud Big Data.

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law#Ef...

Yes, but they only store data in China for Chinese customers (as per the registered region of the Apple ID). [1]

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351

Right, which is still Apple complying with the Chinese National Intelligence Law and giving up private customer data to the Chinese government.

This is effectively what TikTok is (claims to be) doing as well https://www.bytedance.com/en/#corporate-structure

Tiktok' parent is bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a US and a Chinese subsidiary. Chinese subsidiary runs douyin is subjected to the intelligence law. The US subsidiary runs tiktok and is managed by US employees and is not subject to the same law. The intelligence law would be problematic if bytedance is incorporated in China but it's not. The data and the code for tiktok is stored in the US and Chinese subsidiary cannot view that data.

>The intelligence law would be problematic if bytedance is incorporated in China but it's not. The data and the code for tiktok is stored in the US and Chinese subsidiary cannot view that data.

But the issue is that bytedance is still physically located in China, and is probably subject to CCP pressure. eg. "it'd be a real shame if your beijing offices were shut down because of fire code violations". Or they go straight to the CEO and demand that they backdoor their US servers or he gets sent to the gulag. According to wikipedia, the CEO of TikTok reports directly to the CEO of Zhang Yiming, so there isn't really separation in terms of control.

From TikTok's privacy policy (via stratechery article)

> We may share your information with a parent, subsidiary, or other affiliate of our corporate group.

So I really don't see what your point is here.

>The US subsidiary runs tiktok and is managed by US employees and is not subject to the same law.

Which leaves us with the question as to whether or not the government cares what the law says or whether they would back down if employees in China said they can't easily hand over foreign data.

Eventually tiktok will run anything that is remotely sensitive inside us soil. That has already began.

Has there been any 3rd party audit that shows your claims to be true?

Wouldn't it look suspicious if they did that though? I'm curious to know. If they ever were audited wouldn't that stand out?

I dont see why. Accessing data on a service you are renting? Seems like normal everyday kinda stuff

I was thinking about the volume of the data and the type. But yeah they probably could easily obfuscate it. Wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy it at that rate though? Am I missing something?

If its just the IP address and basic info of some dissident, that wouldn't be alot of traffic

> According to Chinese law, the government can quietly demand any information they want on anyone. A warrant in China? Hah.

Which Chinese law?

https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/the-real-danger-of-chinas-na...

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