If Alan Kohler worked for the ABC, I would understand how he would find it necessary to find a red under the bed, since this is their unwritten policy. Alan’s new red is not under his bed, but everywhere – in his phone, in his laptop and in his wifi. China, most certainly, is spying on him through all devices made in China.
Although it is intriguing that China would have any interest in Alan at all, he clearly considers all those details that a ‘pixel’ harvests contribute to a collective threat to our country.
We shouldn’t laugh when Alan admits that he doesn’t read terms and conditions, use any security barriers readily available or switch off features of software. After all, the wantonly gullible should be pitied, not mocked.
Before we dive deeper into what might be a diagnosable case of paranoia, let’s clarify that Alan’s little rant is opinion – and just opinion, since any facts that he might call upon are masked by selective contextualisation.
For example, the comparison to the supposed spying on Australia by Russia which ASIO ‘removed’ ignores that ByteDance, along with Huawei, have placed their technology ‘in the open’ to be prodded and poked by western agencies. Huawei placed its code in the public space, something none of its competitors were prepared to do.
This is equivalent to a Russian spy wearing a trench coat and dark glasses and wearing a Kremlin badge.
Alan reveals that he is speaking beyond his expertise by claiming that code lurks waiting to surveil us all and then to inform the mother ship of our secret movements. He seems not to have caught up with the simple fact that any code on any platform requires launching. Certainly, tricking people into launching this code is the modus operandi of most corporates, but preventing it is elementary.
I can switch off Google surveilling my every move around the place, but I choose not to. Google timeline has provided valuable information for me to use, such as giving me accurate data on my trips in vehicles to help me determine whether I should buy an EV in a rural area – it did and I did.
If China is relying on data from TikTok for espionage, it’s on very precarious grounds, as it is so easily stymied. Of course, it simply isn’t. It is TikTok that wants data to provide what every social media platform wants – audience reach for the purpose of commerce. Wow. That’s a great insight.
Alan’s journey on self-embarrassment continues with this gem. “Data is stored on its own servers, somewhere.” Who would have imagined that customer gathering data would be stored on a server by the company interested? And “somewhere”. Ooo. Mysterious. Sinister.
Alan might be interested to know that most companies with cloud presence have absolutely no idea where their data is stored. This is the manner of distributed systems. To prevent loss, data is spread over electronic devices, over servers and over geographical locations. This is a complete non-issue.
It is like a listening bug in the person’s home, as well as a GPS tag in their car without their knowledge or consent. Permission is given in the T&Cs, of course, but no one ever reads them.
Well, actually, it’s nothing like either. These red herrings require someone to place something that is generally undetectable, about which consent in never sought in any form in any form and cannot be blocked without some kind of jamming. ‘Hidden’ code is detectable by the most basic of anti-virus software, consent has to be given either through the Terms and Conditions or by explicit (but misinformed) action by the user and block is technically simple.
So, Alan’s fearmongering can easily be exposed here. Is it derived from ignorance, arrogance or racism? Who knows?
ByteDance says it doesn’t share the data with the Chinese government, but no one believes that for a minute. Social media algorithms that are designed to hook users and keep them engaged by constantly learning what they like and tailoring content specifically for them. The result is that we’re all constantly looking at our phones.
It’s sort of pitiable how incoherent Alan is in his ‘arguments’. What starts here as an extension of the Sinophobia already express morphs into a nebulas lament about social media and phone usage. If only Alan could do the five minutes of research to actually provide a critique of our habits. He might even stumble upon something substantial.
Having executed such a lame objection, Alan simply slips into conjecture. It’s the algorithm, mate.
Surely we have all now heard of the wicked algorithms lurking under bridges or under our bed. In an effort to inject some kind of interest into Alan’s dull lament, I have written a great story that might have been better for him to have published.
Under the bridges of the digital realm, algorithms lay in wait, hungry for data. One day, a hapless passer-by named Jack clicked on a tempting link. Suddenly, a captcha troll emerged, demanding Jack solve puzzles before he could proceed. Jack, frustrated but determined, solved each riddle until finally, he reached safety. From that day forth, Jack learned to navigate the web’s treacherous bridges, armed with wit and a healthy dose of skepticism.
Nothing like a great fable to engage the little ones. But wait. Alan has good evidence. Enter the most reliable source we know – US intelligence, that oxymoronic paragon of virtue. No, it is not a conspiracy, so can you stop calling it that.
Just so you know that TikTok is evil, associate it with Hamas and the No campaign. I mean, here’s the data that proves it. No, really. I had it here somewhere. I’m sure I wrote it down. Well, just take my word for it. OK. So, I lost it. But “TikTok on government devices”. Doesn’t that count? You mean, devices that access systems that have data firmly behind firewalls and high authentication standards. Or, is tracking the Attorney General’s visits to a local synagogue a national secret?
Let’s face it. Alan just doesn’t know what he is talking about, is fascinated with conspiracies and hates China. He may be interested to know that a contract for a weapons system with Israel has jettisoned because they were suspected of spying.
Not quite the protagonist Alan was hoping for? Yes, I think I support a bill for “Protecting Australians from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications.” Might help if we don’t invite them to run our defense systems. But, sadly, we are going in for another round. That must send Alan into a spin. Certainly angers me that genocidal states get the inside works.
An outsized proportion of the 34 million videos uploaded to TikTok each day come from America. If it were shut down, there would be a big drop in the number, and probably quality, of videos being served by TikTok’s algorithms to the rest of the world, including 8.5 million Australians.
I can already sense the delight that Alan feels on curtailing free expression. His anti-China wet dreams may come true.