Breaks declassified document on Russia probe... Maria Bartiromo, Best in Class!
Show starts with newly declassified documents on Russia probe origins could point to criminality.
@ 0:50: Lindsey Graham, Senate Judiciary Committee discusses how difficult it was to obtain the documents, declassified during the show, if not for Attorney General William Barr… Misrepresentation of facts, who gave the briefing to the Senate Intel Community as they misrepresented facts ‘FBI Briefing on Christopher Steele: ‘Did not cite any significant concerns with the way his reporting was characterized in the dossier to the extent he could identify it.’
@ 02:45: Things attributed to were not known as to the source
@ 03:10: At a minimum, our discussions with the primary sub-source confirm that the dossier was not fabricated by Steele… a year before they said it was word of mouth and some of the information about Trump’s sexual activity was said in jest. A lie, a second crime… putting in doubt all FISA court… the compounding of the lies… Why would you keep telling a lie? It exposes the lie… Bill Precep? 2018! What are you going to do? Write a letter and ask how can you send someone to brief the Senate and mislead?
@ 05:45: What did you learn about Sally Yates? Everyone is throwing Comey under the bus, Rothenstein / Yates both running away and dumping all on Comey… how could Comey continue to do what he did when he knew the dossier was garbage!!!
@ 07:11 - Kevin McCarthy House Minority Leader on Trump signs Executive Orders after stimulus talks collapse on Capitol Hill
@ 11:30: Susan Rice is interesting, has never been elected… on Biden’s search for VP
@ 13:40 on the dial Maria Bartiromo’s 08-10-2020 Sunday Morning Futures dealt with TikTok, revealing the great danger it represents as explained by Senator Cotton of Arkansas… Behind the App is a vacuum of data, stealing everything on a device, contacts, phone calls, text messages, emails, photographs, social media posts, browser history, key strokes, and location data, all going to the Communist Party, deposited in their servers in China, providing the Communist Party access for decades to come. In order for it to operate in the USA, it must have an American company as its parent and be wholly operated in the USA. All of source code, the algorithms, the source data, there can’t be any lingering ties to China. We must be reasonably skeptical that any company will do just that, otherwise we must ban these in the USA… Smart as a whip, Maria Bartiromo asks the question must people who want to fight us poses to confuse, indoctrinate and manipulate our thinking process… and that is: Senator Cotton, you just mentioned a myriad of ways as to how information can be obtained by the Chines? What can the Communist Party do with that information, our contacts, phone numbers, what can they do, where is the threat? Many threats, Senator Cotton says, people using these are very young, but may soon be involved in government, sensitive positions, sensitive information in their hands that can be leveraged, used to manipulate, threaten and or blackmail Americans - Military has forbidden the use of these devices because of the sensitive nature of the information. The incredible amount of information can develop artificial intelligence and machine learning!
Please note that everyone who knows me, knows of my aversion to Apps, in fact, during my participation on the Board of our HOA, I stood against the use of Apps… why? I understand the nature of technology and how intrusive it is!
‘TikTok is a Trojan horse on our devices… the same goes for all Apps!’
@ 19:00 China’s Power Grab… India, Hong Kong, Taiwan and now Senkaku Islands, East China Sea… Senator Cotton explains how the Pandemic is being used for cover to do power grab, killing 10 people on the India border and now on these islands… presence since 2012, lifting the ban on fishing around the Islands, many vessels from China will be coming over, armored up and ready to fight with Japan making claim they own those islands, the USA stands by Japan in this. Chinese Air Force has been in the area, ready for action…
@ 21:40 Exclusive with Steven Schrage who first connected Carter Page with FBI informant Stefan Halper… Dr. Steven Schrage explains…
@ 30:00: Sean Hannity on his new book Live Free or Die… Maria Bartiromo rant the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and Hannity wants to be able to ring the bell. Hannity congratulates Maria on her ability to uncover and provide such great coverage… we agree!!!
45th President of the United States of America, bans dealing with Chinese owners of TikTok, WeChat… Chinese foreign ministry accuses administration of political manipulation!
As of 08-05-2020, we are keeping track of this most important news, and all other details to date, including what these technologies are / what they do, is included in the following LinkedIn Article: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/view-tiktok-after-trump-promises-follow-india-ban-app-reynolds/
- Addressing the threat posed by WeChat: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-wechat/
- Addressing the threat posed by TikTok: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/
President Donald Trump has ordered a sweeping but vague ban on dealings with the Chinese owners of social media apps TikTok and WeChat on security grounds, a move China’s government criticized as “political manipulation.”
The twin executive orders issued Thursday — one for each app — add to growing U.S.-Chinese conflict over technology and security. They take effect in 45 days and could bar the popular apps from the Apple and Google app stores, effectively removing them from U.S. distribution.
China’s foreign ministry expressed opposition but gave no indication whether Beijing might retaliate.
Earlier, Trump threatened a deadline of Sept. 15 to “close down” TikTok in the United States unless Microsoft Corp. or another company acquires it.
TikTok, owned by Beijing-headquartered ByteDance Ltd., is popular for its short, catchy videos. The company says it has 100 million users in the United States and hundreds of millions worldwide.
The Trump administration has expressed concern Chinese social media services could provide American users’ personal information to Chinese authorities, though it has given no evidence TikTok did that.
Instead, officials point to the Communist Party’s ability to compel cooperation from Chinese companies. U.S. regulators cited similar security concerns last year when the Chinese owner of Grindr was ordered to sell the dating app.
In a statement, TikTok expressed shock at the order and complained it violates U.S. law. The company said it doesn’t store American user data in China and never has given it to Beijing or censored content at the government’s request.
TikTok said it spent nearly a year trying to reach a “constructive solution” but the Trump administration “paid no attention to facts” and tried improperly to insert itself into business negotiations. TikTok said it would “pursue all remedies” available to ensure the company and its users are “are treated fairly.”
WeChat’s owner, Tencent, the most valuable Asian technology company, and Microsoft declined to comment.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an expansion of the U.S. crackdown on Chinese technology to include barring Chinese apps from U.S. app stores, citing alleged security threats and calling out TikTok and WeChat by name.
The Chinese foreign ministry accused Washington of “political manipulation” and said the moves will hurt American companies and consumers.
“The United States is using national security as an excuse, frequently abuses national power and unreasonably suppresses companies of other countries,” said a ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin. “This is an outright hegemonic act. China is firmly opposed to it.”
Wang, who didn’t mention TikTok or any other company by name, called on the Trump administration to “correct its wrongdoing” but gave no indication how Beijing might respond.
Trump’s orders say the Chinese-owned apps “threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” They cite the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act and call on the Commerce secretary to define the banned dealings by Sept. 15.
WeChat, known in Chinese as Weixin, is a hugely popular messaging app that links to finance and other services. It has more than 1 billion users. Around the world, many people of Chinese descent use WeChat to stay in touch with friends and family and to conduct business in mainland China.
Within China, WeChat is censored and expected to adhere to content restrictions set by authorities. The Citizen Lab internet watchdog group in Toronto says WeChat monitors files and images shared abroad to aid its censorship in China.
Tencent Holdings Ltd. also owns parts or all of major game companies like Epic Games, publisher of Fortnite, a major video game hit, and Riot Games, which is behind League of Legends.
The Trump administration already was embroiled in a tariff war with Beijing over its technology ambitions. Washington has blocked acquisitions of some U.S. assets by Chinese buyers and has cut off most access to American components and other technology for Huawei Technologies Ltd., a maker of smartphones and network equipment that is China’s first global tech brand.
China-backed hackers have been blamed for breaches of U.S. federal databases and the credit agency Equifax.
In China, the Communist Party limits what foreign tech companies can do and blocks access to the Google search engine, Facebook, Twitter and other social media, along with thousands of websites operated by news organizations and human rights, pro-democracy and other activist groups.
The Communist Party has used the entirely state-controlled press to encourage public anger at Trump’s actions.
“I don’t want to use American products any more,” said Sun Fanyu, an insurance salesperson in Beijing. “I will support domestic substitute products.”
Leading mobile security experts say TikTok is no more intrusive in its harvesting of user data and monitoring of user activity than U.S. apps owned by Facebook and Google.
“The U.S. thinking is that anything that is Chinese is suspect,” said Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing. “They’re being targeted not because of what they’ve done, but who they are.”
The order doesn’t seem to ban Americans from using TikTok, which would be nearly impossible to enforce, said Kirsten Martin, a professor of technology ethics at the University of Notre Dame.
“This is a pretty broad and pretty quick expansion of the technology Cold War between the U.S. and China,” said Steven Weber, faculty director for the Berkeley Center for Long Term Cybersecurity.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Epoch Times… The Beijing-based parent company of the popular video-sharing app TikTok employs at least 138 Chinese Communist Party members! According to an internal document obtained by The Epoch Times, many of the Communist Party members are in managerial positions! The employment of CCP members by ByteDance further raises security concerns about TikTok, which the company says has 100 million users in the United States, what?
TikTok logos are seen on smartphones in front of a displayed ByteDance logo in a file illustration picture. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)
TikTok’s Parent Company Employs Chinese Communist Party Members in Its Highest Ranks
BY NICOLE HAO August 7, 2020 Updated: August 8, 2020 Print
More than 130 employees at ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-sharing application TikTok, are part of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee embedded in the company. Many of the employees work in management positions, an internal document reveals.
The extent of CCP membership among ByteDance management further demonstrates the company’s ties to the Chinese regime, fueling security concerns about TikTok.
By law, Chinese companies are required to set up Communist Party units within their offices to ensure that business policies and employees toe the Party line. ByteDance, founded in March 2012, set up its Party committee in October 2014.
According to Party regulations, companies’ committee members are appointed at political conferences. Members serve five-year terms.
It’s unclear exactly how many Party members or committee members are among ByteDance’s 60,000 employees across 230 global offices; the list obtained by The Epoch Times is only a partial listing of committee members at its Beijing headquarters.
At the headquarters office, at least 138 employees—mostly in management positions or technical roles—are in the company’s influential Beijing Party committee, according to the internal list. Sixty on the list are classified as having a managerial role.
The document details each committee member’s full name, gender, birthday, date they joined the CCP, ID numbers, and type of position in the company, such as managerial or technical.
The revelations come as the U.S. government intensifies scrutiny of TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps on national security grounds. U.S. officials have repeatedly sounded the alarm that American personal data collected by TikTok could be accessed by Beijing, as Chinese companies are beholden to the CCP.
ByteDance didn’t respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump on Aug. 6 issued executive orders to ban U.S. transactions with ByteDance, and Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. The ban will take effect in 45 days. Trump has also given ByteDance until Sept. 15 to sell TikTok to Microsoft or another American firm. Microsoft confirmed that it’s in talks to buy the app.
The entrance of a ByteDance office in Beijing on July 8, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo previously said the U.S. administration’s actions targeting Chinese apps seek to address a “broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The CCP members list reveals the extent of the Party’s relationship with ByteDance, and dovetails with the tech giant’s long-documented history of cooperating with authorities on censorship.
Founder and CEO Zhang Yiming and other senior executives have openly expressed their desire to have the company support Party goals in the past.
James Carafano, vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, said this level of CCP membership is typical for Chinese companies.
“All instruments of power are tied back to the Communist Party, and that includes economic instruments of power,” Carafano told The Epoch Times.
He said that in China, there is no transparency about links between private companies and the CCP, thus “these companies literally can’t be treated and trusted the way you would interface with other companies in global commerce.”
ByteDance’s presence in the United States via TikTok raises concerns, Carafano said, given its access to vast swathes of Americans’ personal data. TikTok’s assurances that it operates independently to ByteDance are “irrelevant,” he added.
“It’s a Chinese-owned company,” Carafano said. “You have no confidence in the software. You have no confidence in their handling of data. And you have no confidence that they’re independent of Chinese direction.”
CCP Members List
Zhang Fuping, the company’s “chief editor” and vice president, has previously been identified in Chinese media reports as secretary of the firm’s Party committee. He also appears in the name list The Epoch Times obtained.
<img class="size-medium wp-image-3451820" src="https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2020/08/05/bytedance-2-600x197.jpg" alt="Epoch Times Photo" width="600" height="197" /> A partial list of CCP members at ByteDance, which have been redacted. Zhang Fuping’s name is in blue. (Provided to The Epoch Times)
Zhang is in charge of censorship-related tasks for the company’s social media platforms.
In previous Chinese state-run media reports, Zhang expressed his willingness to promote the Party’s censorship policies.
In an April 2019 interview with Xinhua, Zhang explained that network security to the company means “the public opinion can be led in the right direction … full of positive energy, and promote the core values of socialism.”
The internal name list that The Epoch Times obtained reveals that many senior managers are also members of the Party committee.
Committee member Zhang Nan (male) was listed as an employee who directly reported to one of ByteDance’s top 14 executives, in an organization chart obtained by news site The Information in April 2019. Those 14 in turn report to the CEO, Zhang Yiming.
Zhang Nan was promoted in March to business director of the Feishu app, according to a report by Chinese tech news site Lei News. The tool combines different collaboration apps into a single platform.
Meanwhile, Meng Haibo is director of the public affairs department at ByteDance, according to a 2018 report by Youth Hangzhou, a state-run newspaper. He is in charge of “affairs related to government cooperation” and heads big data analysis projects, according to the report.
Dang Liya, a senior manager of ByteDance’s language training apps, joined the Party in 2013.
Other staff on the list are lower-level managers at the firm’s different properties, according to The Epoch Times’ research.
For example, Xia Yong is the chief editor of Toutiao, a popular news aggregator app owned by ByteDance, while Xia Manxue is a commercial product manager there, according to her LinkedIn page.
The company’s hiring practices also give Party members preference. For example, the company’s recent job recruitment notice for “editors” in charge of monitoring current-affairs-related content specified that “CCP members have hiring priority.”
Police Cooperation
On April 25, 2019, ByteDance signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China’s Ministry of Public Security, which is in charge of the country’s police.
Local police routinely arrest and detain those who post information deemed sensitive by authorities.
At the signing ceremony, Zhan Jun, Party boss of the propaganda department within the Ministry of Public Security, said, “We should use new online media to voice out the good voices of Chinese police, tell nice police stories, build a good image of our police, and foster close relations between police and the people.”
State-run media China Police Net reported that ByteDance would help set up and operate Toutiao and Douyin accounts for each police department within all Chinese provincial governments—at the municipal and county levels—as well as the national ministry. ByteDance will help to promote the posts generated by the police accounts, the report added.
Chinese police own more than 50,000 social media accounts across different platforms and have more than 100 million followers in total, according to the report.
Annie Wu and Cathy He contributed to this report.
How is The Epoch Times different from other media?
The Epoch Times is the fastest-growing independent media in America. We are different from other media organizations because we are not influenced by any government, corporation, or political party. Our only goal is to bring our readers accurate information and to be responsible to the public. We don’t follow the unhealthy trend in today’s media environment of agenda-driven journalism and instead use our principles of Truth and Tradition as our guiding light.
We're working day and night to cover the CCP virus outbreak for you. Donating as little as the amount of a cup of coffee will help keep our media going.
* * * * * * * * * *