Florida wants Apple & Google to label apps made outside US
Republican Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody wants Apple and Google to flag foreign-owned apps on iPhone and Android, citing a potential national security risk.
TikTok
In letters she sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Moody calls for the companies to notify customers when they download an app owned or developed by a foreign entity, citing national security.
"We must ensure that consumers have the information needed to make informed decisions about their data privacy and security," Moody said in a letter to Apple and Google. "The existing lack of transparency in app stores can create a significant risk for Americans citizens and could cause their personal information to be exploited by foreign entities of concern."
As an example, Moody pointed to TikTok, a social media app owned by a Chinese company. Moody noted that it has "been flagged by national security experts as posing a risk to both privacy and user information."
Another example is Pushwoosh, a Russian company that created code which was found in thousands of apps in the App Store, including those from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as the US Army.
"Further, it is alarming that out of the top apps in Apple's App Store [and Google's Play Store], the top three are China-based, thus equating to hundreds of millions of downloads domestically and billions worldwide," Moody added.
It's not clear specifically where Moody is placing her line for labeling. Her letter cites foreign-owned apps which could mean any app developed and distributed by companies or individuals outside of the US, but her examples are exclusively from China.
At present, Apple's App Store labels the developer, and includes links to a website. The nationality of the developer is not listed on the App Store page, but is generally available when users click-through to the site in question.
Several states have already banned TikTok on government devices, including Maryland, Texas, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. The House of Representatives also ordered staff and lawmakers to uninstall TikTok from their devices.
The US government has ban TikTok from government-owned devices. Aspects of the federal government also want to strike it from the App Store entirely, though that has yet to be ordered from a legislative standpoint.
However, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr believes a nationwide ban is inevitable. "I don't believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," Carr said in a November interview. The data, he believes, could be used to covertly influence political processes in the United States, potentially to benefit China's administration.
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TikTok
In letters she sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Moody calls for the companies to notify customers when they download an app owned or developed by a foreign entity, citing national security.
"We must ensure that consumers have the information needed to make informed decisions about their data privacy and security," Moody said in a letter to Apple and Google. "The existing lack of transparency in app stores can create a significant risk for Americans citizens and could cause their personal information to be exploited by foreign entities of concern."
As an example, Moody pointed to TikTok, a social media app owned by a Chinese company. Moody noted that it has "been flagged by national security experts as posing a risk to both privacy and user information."
Another example is Pushwoosh, a Russian company that created code which was found in thousands of apps in the App Store, including those from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as the US Army.
"Further, it is alarming that out of the top apps in Apple's App Store [and Google's Play Store], the top three are China-based, thus equating to hundreds of millions of downloads domestically and billions worldwide," Moody added.
It's not clear specifically where Moody is placing her line for labeling. Her letter cites foreign-owned apps which could mean any app developed and distributed by companies or individuals outside of the US, but her examples are exclusively from China.
At present, Apple's App Store labels the developer, and includes links to a website. The nationality of the developer is not listed on the App Store page, but is generally available when users click-through to the site in question.
Several states have already banned TikTok on government devices, including Maryland, Texas, South Dakota, and Oklahoma. The House of Representatives also ordered staff and lawmakers to uninstall TikTok from their devices.
The US government has ban TikTok from government-owned devices. Aspects of the federal government also want to strike it from the App Store entirely, though that has yet to be ordered from a legislative standpoint.
However, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr believes a nationwide ban is inevitable. "I don't believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," Carr said in a November interview. The data, he believes, could be used to covertly influence political processes in the United States, potentially to benefit China's administration.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Pork Barrel politics is the only reason NASA is in Texas, Alabama and Florida in the first place they weren’t chosen for their infrastructure. Note, rising sea waters will take care of all three locations in 50 years.
"We must ensure that consumers have the information needed to make informed decisions about their data privacy and security,"
What exactly is the advantage, much less the mechanism, that ordinary consumers are expected to leverage to make their own informed decisions about data privacy and security? Do ordinary consumers receive daily briefings, receive periodic updates, or routinely peruse security threat reports from informed sources, private and government based, about how, when, and where security threats are a cause for concern?
Informed decisions? Let's get real. The vast majority of consumers don't know jack squat about cyber security and privacy threats, much less sift through the noise to separate fact from fiction to begin the process of making an informed decision. You know, the same consumers who routinely post private and personally identifiable information about themselves and their kids and grandkids on social media. What? Me worry? They've been conditioned and primed through shaky media coverage, bias, propaganda, innuendo, speculation, and bullshit-spewed-through-a-bullhorn to automatically associate "enemy status" with whatever and whomever they've been trained to react to in a predictably negative way.
This isn't being "informed," it's being "indoctrinated."
Soft forms of indoctrination are still indoctrination. The big difference is that soft indoctrination is self-enforced through conditioning while hard indoctrination is government-enforced through guns and work camps.
Yeah those poor delusional souls in FL, blindly following that DeSantis fellow. FL, where his leadership eliminated half their population with his reckless cv-19 policies. Census showing a decline as people vigorously flee FL to the well-run blue states of CA, NY, MA, IL… heck all those states that show FL how it should be done. /s
(Headache brewing from the eye rolling while typing this).
I kid I kid..... or do I.
Surely Apples existing Labeling does better at actually informing the customer than playing to nationalistic ideals.
They could add a label for "App based in country that spies on citizens" but that would include Australia the other 4 eyes and well all the rest not just China.
But what about their parent company, ByteDance? It's the same thing, so what exactly do the idiot Republicans in FL expect Apple to do? Start doing checks of people based on their nationality or ethical look? I'm sure DeSantis would love that, but it's neither reasonable nor feasible.
But even if ByteDance or TikTok had zero presence in the US and somehow you could police the geographical location in which code was compiled none of this would matter because all they'd have to do is set up the smallest presence, like an office with a Mac they could remote into so they could compile the code.
If they want to crack down on something, how about all the knock off items on Amazon.