U.S. won't approve TikTok deal if China maintains control: Trump | China to lose access to Australian space tracking station | ‘Vital’ data sharing deal with US delayed
Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said his administration would not approve the sale of TikTok to Oracle Corp ORCL.N and Walmart Inc WMT.N if China's ByteDance maintains any control. “If we find that they don’t have total control, then we’re not going to approve the deal... We will be watching it very closely,” Trump told Fox News in an interview. Reuters
China will lose access to a strategic space tracking station in Western Australia when its contract expires, the facility’s owners said, a decision that cuts into Beijing’s expanding space exploration and navigational capabilities in the Pacific region. Reuters
Legislation paving the way for Australia to enter into an expedited data-sharing deal with the US has been delayed, despite the federal government saying it was “vital” that it was passed before the end of winter. The Australian government has been in negotiations with the US government to secure a CLOUD Act data-sharing deal for nearly a year and introduced the legislation necessary to facilitate this in March. InnovationAus
ASPI ICPC
TikTok Train Wreck: Current Deal Solves Nothing and Won't Hold
ChinaTalk
@jordanschnyc
The current deal does not solve any of the concerns I initially had about TikTok’s US operations. TikTok’s sort of sale to Oracle + Walmart doesn’t do anything to address algorithmic manipulation of political content, access to American’s data, or content moderation. As this recent ASPI report laid out in painstaking detail, Bytedance isn’t a company that can be trusted to live up to the expectations America should have for its social media giants, much less reject demands the Chinese government may put on it.
A US court has temporarily blocked president Trump's executive order banning WeChat
ABC Radio
A US court, a judge has temporarily blocked president Trump's executive order banning the Chinese owned social media app, WeChat, citing freedom of speech concerns. Trump moved against the app on national security grounds. He had also threatened another wildly popular Chinese owned app, the short video platform TikTok, with a ban for similar reasons. But he's now backed down from that, approving a deal that will see the US software company, Oracle, acting as custodian of US data on TikTok. Hear from Fergus Ryan, an expert on Chinese social media and Chinese tech companies at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
TikTok’s security credentials remain under a cloud despite US deal
The Sydney Morning Herald
@carawaters
However, TikTok Global will still be 80 per cent owned by Chinese company ByteDance and Fergus Ryan, analyst at the Australian Strategy Policy Institute, said it was not really clear how any of the national security issues involved had been solved. "It's my understanding that there will be no transfer of [TikTok's] algorithm from ByteDance to Oracle," he said. "And that means that the underlying censorship problems can never really be solved because the algorithm will remain a black box."
Read ASPI ICPC’s September 2020 report TikTok and WeChat: Curating and controlling global information flows here.
Australia
‘Vital’ data sharing deal with US delayed
InnovationAus
@denhamsadler
Legislation paving the way for Australia to enter into an expedited data-sharing deal with the US has been delayed, despite the federal government saying it was “vital” that it was passed before the end of winter. The Australian government has been in negotiations with the US government to secure a CLOUD Act data-sharing deal for nearly a year and introduced the legislation necessary to facilitate this in March.
‘Shrouded in secrecy': ASD to be grilled over axed official history
The Sydney Morning Herald
@Gallo_Ways
Australia's cyber spy agency will be grilled at a parliamentary hearing over its shock decision to cancel a contract with the Australian National University to write its official history.
Technology put at heart of emissions cuts
The Canberra Times
Investing in low-emissions technology, rather than taxation, is the only way for the world to cut emissions while ensuring economic prosperity can continue. That is the key message to be delivered by Energy Minister Angus Taylor in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday.
Australia's cyber power is more bark than bite
ZDNet
@stilgherrian
A newly-published index ranks Australia's cyber intent four spots higher than its actual cyber capability. Labor says this capability gap is down to the all-talk no-action Morrison government.
Why women are leaving stable jobs for careers in start-ups
The Australian Financial Review
@Gallo_Ways
Women working as doctors, consultants, bankers and lawyers are turning their backs on stable careers to chase the dream of making it big with a start-up, with a new women-only fellowship at accelerator Startmate beginning on Monday. The eight-week program, which is sponsored by companies including SafetyCulture, Secure Code Warrior and Deputy, is designed to help get more women involved in tech start-ups.
Huawei reveals $100m local cost of 'cold war'
The Australian Financial Review
Huawei is cutting its investment in Australia by $100 million and will axe 1000 local jobs as experts warn all sides will be hurt in the China-US tech war.
China
Auditors to Stop Inspecting Factories in China’s Xinjiang Despite Forced-Labor Concerns
The Wall Street Journal
@evawxiao
At least five organizations say they won’t help companies audit their supply chains in China’s Xinjiang region, where human-rights activists say a police-state atmosphere and government controls make it too difficult to determine whether factories and farms are relying on forced labor.
Read ASPI ICPC’s report Uyghurs for Sale here.
China to lose access to Australian space tracking station
Reuters
@barrett_ink
China will lose access to a strategic space tracking station in Western Australia when its contract expires, the facility’s owners said, a decision that cuts into Beijing’s expanding space exploration and navigational capabilities in the Pacific region.
China rolls out fresh policies to boost hydrogen vehicle sales
Reuters
China, the world’s biggest automobile market, rolled out fresh policies to support hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to improve the industry’s supply chain and technologies, the finance ministry said on Monday.
USA
Trump says U.S. won't approve TikTok deal if China maintains control
Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said his administration would not approve the sale of TikTok to Oracle Corp ORCL.N and Walmart Inc WMT.N if China's ByteDance maintains any control. “If we find that they don’t have total control, then we’re not going to approve the deal... We will be watching it very closely,” Trump told Fox News in an interview.
TikTok Deal Exposes a Security Gap, and a Missing China Strategy The New York Times @SangerNYT
China Has Reasons to Like TikTok’s Trump-Approved Shotgun Deal The Wall Street Journal
It’s getting harder for tech companies to bridge the US-China divide
Technology Review
@rzhongnotes
Corporations have never been able to cleanly separate their activities from geopolitics. Now, technology firms are finding it increasingly difficult to work across the US-China divide. Try as they might to cross-pollinate through research and investments, the climate between China and the United States continues to deteriorate into political one-upmanship, leaving users to pay the steepest costs.
Despite past denials, LAPD has used facial-recognition software 30,000 times in last decade, records show
LA Times
The Los Angeles Police Department has used facial-recognition software nearly 30,000 times since 2009, with hundreds of officers running images of suspects from surveillance cameras and other sources against a massive database of mugshots taken by law enforcement.
A Notorious COVID Troll Actually Works for Dr. Fauci’s Agency
The Daily Beast
@lachlan
Bill Crews is a PR official at the National Institutes of Health. But he also has another job: an anonymous RedState editor who rails against the agency for which he works.
This yoga instructor is fighting the rise of QAnon in the wellness community
CBC
Seane Corn never thought her duties as yoga instructor would one day include warning people about the dangers of an international right-wing conspiracy theory. The Los Angeles yoga teacher is one of several high-profile Instagram influencers using their platforms to combat the rise of the QAnon conspiracy theory in wellness spaces.
India
Ban on Chinese apps: India started it, US consolidates it, world must follow
ORF Online
@gchikermane
Following in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s footsteps, the US President Donald Trump has banned two Chinese apps — WeChat from 20 September 2020 and TikTok from 12 November 2020 — from the US. As per an 18 September 2020 US Department of Commerce release, the US has prohibited the two apps from being downloaded by American citizens. The reason, as in the case of India, is security.
UK
Britain's top cyber spy Ciaran Martin steps out of the shadows
The Telegraph
After years spent protecting the UK from cyberattacks, the former head of the NCSC is going to teach the management of public services.