The Next Now: Privacy and China
##TikTok's looming ban could spell the start of the end of the internet as we know it. Launched by Beijing-based company Bytedance in 2018, the app claims 800 million monthly active users, with about 1.6 million Australian users. TikTok patched every vulnerability they were notified of in November by December 15, yet bans look imminent despite this. Of course, vulnerabilities are discovered in all of our favourite software and hardware, even Intel processors. Beyond TikTok's patched vulnerabilities, one could argue there isn't actually much to be alarmed about here, unless you also want to be alarmed by the practices of Facebook and Google. Even if TikTok was to become provably fully compliant with the best security practices, TikTok seems it will fall victim to geopolitics moreso than engineering oversights. You see, the TikTok alarm has shifted from being about vulnerabilities to alarms that sound much more like those raised about Huawai: rapidly growing yet intangible security concerns that Chinese companies will be subjected to the demands of their government against our own national interests. With many countries in the west establishing what are effectively their own versions of the Great Firewall of China, it feels as though the globalising power of the internet is being wound back. This will have significant cultural and economic ripple effects. What will it mean to be a global technology company in 10 years? Will such a thing even be practical?
Britain has banned Huawei from its 5G network and will remove existing equipment by 2027.
From bad to worse for the Chinese telecoms equipment juggernaut. In August 2018, Australia became the first country in the Five Eyes intelligence network to ban Huawei from involvement in the country's 5G network. New Zealand and the US followed, with Britain being the latest to join that list. The anti-Huawei movement continues, with unavoidable yet hard to predict economic and political consequences. Like the shortsighted and continually sub-optimal NBN fibre rollout in Australia, a delayed 5G network in Britain may not just cost taxpayers more now, but delay or offset in perpetuity the economic benefits that arise out of better business taking place - and brand new businesses being able to take shape - on the back of such infrastructure. This isn't to say Huawei's ban isn't in fact warranted, yet beyond the hotly contested accusations of Huawei backdoors, the common theme here is political in nature: the measures we're seeing unfold have little to do with technology vulnerabilities, which can be identified and addressed, yet much more to do with technology provenance, which can not.
"This app would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies."
Is that a notification on your smartphone that you would agree to, or would you tap the 'deny' button for that request? Expect to see that exact message a lot when iOS 14 lands on your iPhone. Apple is getting increasingly aggressive with anti-tracking across their ecosystem, because they can. Unlike Amazon (a commerce company) and Google (an advertising company), Apple's model means it can champion privacy - shaming those who don't as a byproduct - because Apple's core business is genuinely about their hardware and services. In the world of Amazon and Google their devices exist only to sell you things. Either their own things, or someone else's. The more ubiquitous their presence in your life and the more they know about you, the more profitable they have the potential to be. Apple cares less about your identity and more about your loyalty - they need you to buy their next device and subscribe to iCloud, buy the odd app, and maybe even use Apple Music... that's enough. This puts them in an incredible position of leverage, where they can overtly call-out common practices that other technology companies rely on; practices that make many consumers squeamish, rightly or wrongly. This is only going to harden Apple loyalty, while shaking up online advertising and ecommerce, given Apple's approximate 50% smartphone market share in some of the countries that spend the most online - places like the UK, Canada, Australia and USA. In our current global climate, privacy is becoming the 'killer app of life' and Apple is who makes it. With a closed, tightly controlled ecosystem and without a reliance on ad money or the sale of user data, they might be the only major tech company who can make it.