all the check points behind us we reach bethlehem. the atmosphere is in contrast to everything we saw on the way. but the words and as a person from bethlehem will have the green car. oh, it has a green passport. as a green idea, i can visit with that and whenever, so i think that's my 1st time and it's so different how the news for trade is such a hot tick and it's such a big mess. but it's, it's beautiful. everyone. so friendly and lovely and fast, but didn't totally get into the christmas spirit, but it's now getting, getting to me. i mean, it is a special place and i thought with great chance to be here once in a maybe in a lifetime, i don't know, but i'm around i'm coming all year. so celebrate the morning. so we are so happy christmas here is this exciting. i think take

a pinch so you might not know what it's like until you're actually here. and i think you might have a completely different perspective if you're actually experience the sign and that's the kind of christmas holiday love and family. yeah. well i think everyone knows about it for the senior situations and everyone is facing. so yeah, that the work should take action for this. busy bearable people. busy busy separated from the families policy and especially we are finally in bethlehem. if mother mary would make it here today, she would find the state to reach the decorated for christmas and full of celebrating crowds for the 1st time in 3 years. the town believe to be the birthplace of jesus except christians from all over the globe. but mother, mary would not see here today, leaving him the nearby guys, a trip or those living in the northern part of the occupied west bank. those who are not permitted to enter bethlehem and left celebrating with tears in there,

right. there is no ot from bethlehem and merry christmas israeli authorities have been dozens of christians from the gaza strip from entering bethlehem to celebrate christmas. every year. israel increases the number of permits it denies under the pretext of security, sparking anger among people seeking to celebrate the holiday with their families. as we used to apply for permits and send our documents, including our photos and identity papers, through the church and deliver them to a civil affairs department, it confirms that our applications are under examination by these really authorities . and we will be informed whether our applications are accepted by israel or not. i sent my application about 3 weeks ago. and 2 weeks later i found out that my request was rejected every year. i hope that my application will be accepted. my wife and children have received permits, but i have not my kids always tell me, we hope you go with us to bethlehem to celebrate their thought bubble every year. at least $300.00 christians get

a rejection from its rhonda authorities to visit the holy sites in jerusalem bethlehem. but the occupation authorities did not see palestinians as humans. therefore, fulton christians and muslims of forbidden from visiting the holy site. it's a denial of basic human right. israel only relies on being extra parts against a weak one. regarding the palestinian territories. it doesn't comply with any united nations mechanism. it feels that it is above the law and immune from accountability that's are up on the top stories for this. our for more updates had over to r t dot com. and up next former c i agent, john, curiosity dives deep into the power of tick tock on our team. the whistleblowers will see you back in 30. mm ah ah ah ah ah

ah ah, with ah it what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy even foundation, let it be an arms race is on offense. very dramatic development only personally and getting to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very difficult time time to sit down and talk ah

ah, the who's to talk is the most popular social media app in the world, even surpassing facebook for the 1st time this year. it's algorithms are a mystery to observers and even the industry insiders. how does picked up target users and is it different from country to country?

pick talk has received a great deal of news coverage for something called tick tock, challenges. many of these challenges have turned deadly with choking videos and videos about suicide and depression being spread around by younger viewers in america. more teens are self diagnosing with mental illness based on tick tock videos because many perceive it to be the in thing right now. amongst their peers, but do other countries see the same content of us coming up? we'll speak with one of the world's leading experts on the subject. i'm john curiosity and you're watching whistleblowers. the. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 a parade of tick tock whistleblowers have come out recently and said the chinese company has specifically engineered the tick tock app to show harmful content to americans. while teens in the united states are being fed videos about suicide, depression, and dangerous challenges in china,

the videos are mostly educational and positive, especially toward the chinese government. former president, donald trump was ready to ban tick tock from the phones of all americans. however, the biden administration undid many of his regulations limiting the app in the united states. the by did ministration reversed these restrictions without any investigation into exactly what data is being monitored and is now realizing the trunk may have been right. as more and more information becomes public, it's clear that there is a dark side to take talk, a dark side that may even threaten the lives of vulnerable teens and younger childer were joined by doctor darren hayes. dr. hayes is a professor at pace university and is one of the world's top rank experts on digital forensics and cybersecurity. he's also a highly respected researcher on cybersecurity, working with law enforcement organizations all around the world. welcome, dr. hayes, thanks for being with us. first, to help us to understand the nature of this problem, at 1st glance, it seems

a little far fetched. tick tock seems like a harmless way to share videos, but then there's this dark underbelly. how is what tick? tock does different from what tick tock says it does. so there has been a lot of questions about what to does, and we've actually researched it quite extensively. i think one of the issues is for quite a long time by chance, which owns tick tock has denied that people in china have access to videos into personal information on us citizens. and more recently they've actually acknowledged, yes, we can actually access information, personal information about individuals. so as part of our research, one of the things that we look at, we look at security of a mobile application that we also look at permissions associated with a mobile application. now this could be viewed as high risk. what you know,

your traditional starbucks up does monitor your location throughout the day if you have your location services on. and this is the 1st issue associated with tick tock that it does monitor your, your location. because you're giving it access to your contacts, that the developers could send a script to download the contexts from your phone. and there could be people who work for the government in your context. some people even save passwords in there. so there are security concerns related to that. we know that tick tock can also access system information and can also pull a lot of user data from the device. there's also some more elevation privileges which are very, very concerning associated with this mobile application. so for example,

we know that it has the ability to check your phone to see if you have u. s. government apps running on your device. we know that it can install malware in theory. it has that ability. and we also know that it has deep linking. so this is not uncommon with a lot of applications today where you can connect other social media accounts such as facebook and twitter. but this is the case with tick tock, which also gives tick tock. the ability to pull other information from other social media accounts. we've all heard recently about tick tock, challenges, where teens and younger children are choking themselves in some cases, accidentally hanging themselves and doing other dangerous things that have panicked parents. is this something that tick tock executives planned something that they wanted to see happen? or is it just kids doing something stupid on video? i really think that this is not the fault of bite or the tick tock. unfortunately,

young people will find all different types of social media outlets to perform these idiotic challenges and dangerous challenges. but one question is, how is, by chance and the developers of tick tock, going to be monitoring that, to safeguard our children, and to work with law enforcement if there is illegal activity or dangerous activity occurring. another aspect of tic toc that has been in the news recently is for videos talking about mental illness, depression, and teen suicide. a lot of teens are self diagnosing by what they see on tick tock, which is causing them even more problems. mental health professionals here in the united states say, this is dangerous and it has to stop, but it isn't stopping. if you go on to take talk, you could find hundreds, even thousands of such videos. again, is there no corporate oversight,

or is this being done on purpose? i don't think that this is anything intentional behind the developers. this is really what's happening with social media today is that there are so many people who claim to be clinicians or have advice based on what they heard from a friend. and this is, you know, something and social media today. that's very, very prevalent and not just specific to take talk. i would say that the difference though with tick tock is that it is the number one downloaded app out there. some more people are using it. and 2nd of all, the video is a lot more powerful than anything that you put down in writing. so often these messages carry a lot more weight than other social media platforms. let's talk about tick tock, algorithm for a minute. explain to us why this is so important, how it targets young people and why it's different in the united states compared with other countries. quite honestly, i'm,

i'm not too familiar with the distinction between their algorithm for the u. s. versus other countries. i know that in the u. s. for example, lots of mobile applications that we run can be different, such as websites also in the european union because of the general data protection regulation. for example. i know that some social media outlets also have to be more careful in california because the california consumer privacy act on, in general, the u. s. is a lot more open in terms of sharing information. there's very little federal privacy regulation. and so applications can take advantage of harvesting a lot of data about individuals. we know, for example, what cambridge on the list got, how they worked with facebook, you know, on a previous presidential election for example. and how social media applications can

give a lot of way about a person's nature, their political identity, sexual orientation, and other things. but that privacy advocates should be aware of. we should just be in general, wary of any applications that are available for free because there is a business model that will be built on calling data from the social media applications. how is that information being collected? who is it being shared with? and what is the purpose of those to acquire that data? what are they using it for? is it being used to influence presidential elections or mid term elections? for example, these are questions that we should be asking when facebook 1st became prominent. i was surprised by how many people assumed that facebook was simply a free public service. in fact,

it was calling our data and our photographs and using them for marketing purposes. should we expect anything different from tick tock? i don't think we should really. and i think that there is a price to be paid for privacy. there are tools available out there and so we may complain about privacy. but at the same time the average consumer doesn't want to pay a fee for more private. a more secure email. we let the corporations worry about that and pay for that. you know, we take facebook, for example, facebook look odd and as really company, i believe was called face and they had successfully facially recognized over 11000000000 photographs. okay. we have a company that has headquartered in china that can use the information, use the pictures, the video content, from tick tock to face. we recognize millions and millions of americans. and so

there is a concern, you know, we look at, you know, for example, what, what's going on in china. we know that more than 200000000, closed circuit television cameras are being used. we know that law enforcement uses smart glasses and, and public areas to facially recognize and find wanted criminals. for example, facial recognition is used very commonplace in terms of gaining access to your apartment or you know, accessing public transportation for example. and we know that there are privacy concerns here. so, you know, for example, you know, a law has been student san francisco to stop facial recognition. so there are definitely privacy concerns that we need to concerned about in terms of what tick, tock does, and how our information is being used. thank you dr. hayes, but don't go anywhere. after the break, we'll talk to dr. darren hayes about the policy of confronting tick tock. you're

watching the whistleblowers, i'm john to reaku say to. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ah, a the me yeah, i want you was a lie, you can give us the shot and showed the phenomenon from this day last year. now when i was with that teacher, just session, the file is not national shylie or

when you bought a new born you kick it up. i mean i . 2 welcome back to the whistleblowers. i'm john kerry on to we're speaking with cybersecurity expert and professor dr. darren hayes. dr. hayes at the beginning of his administration. donald trump said that he was going after tick tock, and there was talk for a time that it could be disabled in the united states. that didn't happen, and the biden administration eventually walked away from the policy. what happened? so while there's privacy concerns and this privacy concerns with facebook and with google, it's pretty unpopular if you have the government so called interfering with social media. and you know,

when we hear about donald trump and his fight with twitter, for example, in his account being suspended by twitter. you know, for him then to go and suspend the most popular social media platform out there. there would be many who be outraged many, even from his own party, and i think that that is probably why they didn't move forward with this when we looked, for example, at what happened with while way, z t and other telecommunications infrastructure in the us. this didn't impact americans as much because it was going to be replaced with similar infrastructure. so this type of reasoning is, is a lot more possible to the u. s. consumer than taking down a the most popular social media platform out. there was the trump policy something that the biden administration should have maintained in your view if so,

what do you think that would look like today? how is it that take talk would have been regulated? i think that one of the things that had been discussed is a u. s. company acquiring tick tock and therefore would be subject to more regulation by u. s. regulations. i think that that would have been a good way to deal with this issue. i think that the buyer and ministration should probably have continued with take talk and have a better understanding with how this information, how are information is being stored is being used is being shared by, by dance. and so i think that there are things rather than just say we're going to stop people using this application or deny access to the u. s. consumer. i think that there should have been more of a push. and i think we, we saw the beginnings of rumblings of that with, by chance being acquired by

a u. s. company. what's the chinese strategy here? is it to collect data? is it to influence children? it's a good question and we don't have a lot of those answers. there have been people in the government who talked about, you know, an interest by the chinese government in profiling. every us citizen. we saw, for example, the largest probably most significant data breach of all time, the offsets of personnel management or opm where millions and millions of government employees, all of their information was compromised. and this includes, you know, answers to polygraph tests, fingerprints information about government employees and their families. and so, why would that information be so valuable? why would that have been a target? because when you think about us, it has really no you know,

you can benefit necessarily directly from any kind of fraudulent activity, perhaps if you're a government. but there is, does seem to be this idea in government that there is a willingness to profile. a lot of us citizens to determine who they are. maybe this is a matter of national security. some people speculation that entrance china, the authorities want to know who you are and what your feelings are, for example, politically. and so, you know, building up those profiles and individuals may be of interest. is there a national security concern here specific to tick tock, or do you think we're over reacting? i think that we should be concerned. i mean, when you think about it, the more personal information you have on an individual means that you can identify

people that may be susceptible to giving up information to a foreign government. so you can determine, for example, with the more information that you have. if somebody has a lot of debt, for example, somebody has been through a divorce, they have a lot less money. somebody has a lot of college debt. for example. these are often seen as targets for foreign adversaries. and not information can then be used to find weaknesses and people and may be compromised people and gain access to information at their company. for example, especially if they work for the u. s. government. and so this would be a major concern, and this is why, for example, during the trump administration, they were sending out guidance to government employees not to use tick tock. how can parents protect their children? is it even possible, or is the better strategy just to get our kids off of tick tock?

it's a good question and you know, i, i think that we shouldn't just think about tick tock. we should think about all of these tools that we use for free. so for example, you know, what facebook did with cambridge analytics was one of the most egregious things that we've ever seen. so we have to be leery of any social media platform that's available for free and what is their business model? how's this information being shared? so in terms of what parents need to do, they need to be cognizant of what their children are doing with abs, light, tick, tock, they have to inform them that you know, videos are out there for life. your social media account information is out there for life, or retweet, is being archived, for example, as our websites and this information can come back to haunt you. when you win a scholarship for university, we've seen some of those resend it based on what people put on social media. we've seen, you know,

job offers not coming out because of what people had on their social media. it's very common place for people to look at that, think about not deep linking to other applications. so what that means is, if you're given an option to log in with a google account or with your facebook account, or what spotify, where linkedin don't log in with those credentials into another account, because you're just sharing more of your information with multiple platforms. so that's one of the things. secondly, we've seen for example, with ios apps, a number of different security flaws. recently. this has come out, especially with the pegasus malware and, and a so from israel where, you know, this malware could be installed and somebody is phone. unbeknownst to the individual and that person can be easily monitored, basically full access to their device. so make sure that you upgrade to the latest

version of android or ios on your device. that's really, really important as well as keep your mobile apps updated. there are problems when you connect your phone to a computer, for example. so we know that tick tock, for example, has the ability to connect through your usb and actually manipulate files on your computer. we know that's the case with other mobile applications as well. so be careful where you plug your phone in and how you try to charge your device because you may be giving access to another computing device. so they are some of the main things also just be careful about giving out personal nation. once in the background. there are people out there who are, who are hackers, who look to see information in the background. i've seen this, for example, where people have identified bank statements and account information that was on

a desk in the background while somebody is recording or they taking a picture. so that is something you should be aware of and also just your general pattern of life don't give away where you are, where you go on a daily basis. anything about your routine. because that will often invite people, not just to hack your accounts, but may be that burglarized your, your phone. where can our viewers read more about your work? well, i have a lot of publications research gate for example that they can access. they can contact me, i'm here at the side and the school that pays university email addresses de hayes that pay study d u and just a quick search on the internet, you'll be able to find me. thank you for joining us. and for that important insight, dr. darren hayes, that's all we have for you today. this has been the whistleblowers, i'm john, curiosity. we'll get you next time. 2 2 2

2 2 2 2 ah, with joggers archipelago, coma that she goes to san diego garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, is now the location of a very large u. s. military base. you could give a med, geez, i to the u. s. government to make a military base and just deported or douglas and people from their country. so they call it returned back on the island. no, but we are fighting. that's why i'm real fighting for the right. so i, we do not consider the right to self determination actually applies to the trickle . since i don't the question of self determination, the legal advice we have received is actually the trickle. since we're not at all,

not a people for me, it's time to move on and see what we can do for the tumbler, said committee to return back home. there is no support from the united nation. i commission african united nish. i don't care about douglas, said people lou needs to come to russian state to never does on the north. so i'm skiing with 55 with keys on i need to speak. anyone else with real bad in the european union, the kremlin media machine, the state on crush up to date and switch the r t spoof mckibbin our video agency, roughly all band to on youtube. a

with, with the pentagon has announced a new multi $1000000000.00 military aid package for claiming it's the largest military deliveries. and the ukranian conflict began with ukraine shells. a number of western russian cities on orthodox christmas eve injuring multiple civilians. that's this fight ma. so calling for a truth on the christian festival as ukraine has exported almost 17000000 tons of brain intended for those most affected by food insecurity in africa. but reports show that europe has received the majority of those deliveries.