4CIXQ3d2tHU m.huanqiu.comenarticleUS says China can spy with TikTok. It spies on world with GoogleThey did not mention how the US government itself uses US tech companies that effectively control the global internet to spy on everyone else./f3429ssvr/f5cf1k4hd<article><section data-type="rtext"><p>by Erin Hale</p><p>During a five-hour grilling of the chief executive of TikTok last week, United States lawmakers railed against the possibility of China using the wildly popular, partly Chinese-owned app to spy on Americans.</p><p>They did not mention how the US government itself uses US tech companies that effectively control the global internet to spy on everyone else.</p><p>US lawmakers are also weighing the renewal of powers that force firms like Google, Meta and Apple to facilitate untrammelled spying on non-US citizens located overseas.</p><p>Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which the US Congress must vote to reauthorise by December to prevent it from lapsing under a sunset clause, allows US intelligence agencies to carry out warrantless spying on foreigners’ email, phone and other online communications.</p><p>While US citizens have some protections against warrantless searches under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, the US government has maintained that these rights do not extend to foreigners overseas, giving agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) practically free rein to snoop on their communications.</p><p>Information may also be turned over to US allies like the United Kingdom and Australia.</p><p>Washington enjoys an advantage not shared by other countries: jurisdiction over the handful of companies that effectively run the modern internet, including Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.</p><p>For billions of internet users outside the US, the lack of privacy mirrors the alleged threat that US officials say TikTok poses to Americans.</p><p>“It is a case of ‘rules for thee but not for me,'” Asher Wolf, a tech researcher and privacy advocate based in Melbourne, Australia, told Al Jazeera.</p><p>“So the noise the Americans are making about TikTok must be seen less as a sincere desire to protect citizens from surveillance and influence operations, and more as an attempt to ring-fence and consolidate national control over social media,” Wolf added.</p><p>Amid the growing chorus of voices casting TikTok as a threat, the privacy rights of non-Americans have received little mention.</p><p>In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, the US targeted 232,432 “non-US persons” for surveillance, according to government data.</p><p>The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) estimates that the US government has collected more than one billion communications per year since 2011.</p><p>“It is a little bit ironic for the US to sort of trumpet citizens’ privacy concerns or worries about surveillance," Jonathan Hafetz, an expert on US constitutional law and national security at Seton Hall University in New Jersey said.</p><p>Vedran Sekara, an assistant professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, said the moves to restrict TikTok appeared to be “more political than good policy”.</p><p>“If politicians and lawmakers really were interested in protecting people from ‘evil’ or ‘nefarious’ tech companies, they should instead focus on regulating the entire tech and social media industries rather than just focusing on one company,” Sekara said.</p><p>Erin Hale is a freelance journalist for Al Jazeera.</p></section></article>1680226477848责编：梁昊Global Times Online168022647784811[]{"email":"lianghao@huanqiu.com","name":"梁昊"}