Cat videos not a security threat, minister says as he rules out UK TikTok ban.

15 comments

1. But the people smuggling gangs advertising cheap discounted channel crossings on TikTok are a security threat!

2. £300m well spent by the Chinese to keep their pervasive surveillance tech in every pocket

3. Clearly this person has never lived with cats. They will steal your nuclear secrets and then eat your hand while you’re rubbing their tummy. And you will let them.

4. Byte Dance (Tik Tok parent company) being forced to grant access to user data and install spyware on users devices by the Chinese government, if and when the need arises, is absolutely a security threat. Don’t forget, it’s a state actor with an enormous cyberwarfare budget. They have teams with hundreds, perhaps thousands of engineers constantly trying to find Android and iOS vulnerabilities. Look into the Jia Tan case if you want a taste of how far they are willing to go

5. Lets be honest, MP’s don’t want to come out as anti data-harvesting/selling because it will raise questions about their selling NHS data indirectly by contracting NHS services to tech firms.

6. > He added: “On Government devices, for example, we’ve not been allowed to use TikTok for many years, the last Conservative government took the same position because there’s sensitive information on those devices.

   > “But for consumers who want to post videos of their cats or dancing, that doesn’t seem like a national security threat to me.”

   Despite what the misleading title says, they seem definitely aware that TikTok poses some form of security threat but they’re not going to ban it for the average consumer. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

7. What an odd way of framing it.

   Yes, cat videos aren’t a security threat. But tiktok isn’t a cat video. Tiktok is a piece of spyware owned by the Chinese government that can be used to share cat videos as a secondary purpose.

8. Once again proving that our national security is a JOKE

9. Out of touch comment from someone who doesn’t realise the reach social media has into the lives of people who use it. The manipulation of the tik tok drones to vote a certain way to think a certain way. These corporations will think nothing of providing a platform that children can easily waste 12 hrs a day on to get 1p of advertising revenue from.
   Social media is very much a security/sanity threat.

10. Isn’t it already banned from government / official phones

11. Geesh you lot are paranoid as fck, every site,app etc already has all our data.. government officials etc don’t have the app on their devices as per the article..I don’t even have the app just not my thing.. so many here acting as if they hold some top secret info on their phone…calm the fck down..

12. “Cat”

13. Bro has no idea what the Internet even is. Don’t get me wrong it shouldn’t be banned despite being obvious Chinese spyware and now an even more obvious tool for misinformation and propaganda for the trump presidency, people should be allowed to download it if they want to. Not a fan of the government deciding what apps I’m allowed to doom scroll on. Twitter and Meta are far bigger risks now anyway

14. Romanian presidential elections beg to differ. This guy is a useless tool

15. Minister who doesn’t really have a say on this particular aspect of governance makes statement. Really I expected better from the independent…

    For those outside the uk

    The responsibility for this falls under different cabinet ministers who DO probably feel quite different. You would want be more interested in what the home secretary has to say on the matter

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Secretary

    Because theirs and the prime ministers are the only opinion that matters. Because voting against the home secretary on matters of national security is political suicide

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