US asks Apple and Google to ban TikTok because it is a “national security risk”

TikTok, one of the most popular social platforms, may have days numbered in the US after a BuzzFeed News report came to light warning that data from the platform’s North American users they are not entirely sure how China was able to access it, which the social network denies.

Following this news, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) delegate Brendan Carr wrote to Apple and Google to ask companies to remove TikTok from your stores of applications for “his model of surreptitious data practices”.

According to information handled by Carr, the video application it’s not as innocent as it seems: It’s not just an app for sharing funny videos or memes. Since it works as a sophisticated surveillance tool that collects personal and sensitive data.

“As you know, TikTok is an app available to millions of Americans through their app stores and collects a lot of sensitive data about those US users. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, based in Beijing, an organization linked to the Communists. Part of China is required by Chinese law to meet the surveillance demands of the People’s Republic of China, “Carr said in a letter to Sundar Pichai Y Tim Cook.

After BuzzFeed News released its report, by way of disclaimer, TikTok announced it transfer all user data from the United States to Oracle servers located in the country.

He specified that the company still uses its US-based and Singapore-based servers for backup. But in the future, it hopes to “remove private US user data from our data centers and move it entirely to Oracle’s cloud servers located in the US.”

In Carr’s letter, dated June 24, he states that Apple and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, if they do not ban the Chinese platform of their digital stores will have to give explanations in two communications by July 8th.

According to Carr, tech companies will have to explain why they believe that “surreptitious access to private and sensitive US user data by people located in Beijing, coupled with TikTok’s model of misleading representations and behavior, does not violate any of your app store policies.

At the moment, and waiting for companies to pronounce themselves on this issue, it does not seem that TikTok, which only in the United States has over 136 million usersit will disappear from the digital stores of Apple and Google.

What the leaked TikTok audios say

That ByteDance, the company that developed TikTok, has crossed the line seems to be clear. The Buzzfeed News report detailed the numerous leaked audios of internal meetings claiming that Beijing-based ByteDance has more access and control over US user data than would have been claimed.

According to this investigative work, a TikTok director called an anonymous engineer from ByteDance in China a “chief administrator” who has access to all data.

In other meetings it would have been said, from the TikTok trust and security department, that in China they see everything that happens on the platform.

These practices are not an isolated event. It’s not the first time TikTok has been involved in this kind of controversy in the US – Donald Trump has already tried to ban it in 2020 – and, according to Carr, the leaked audio confirms that the platform has “a pattern of conduct and misrepresentation. in relation to the unrestricted access that people in Beijing have to sensitive US user data. “

Joe Biden, president of the United States, proposed in early 2022 a series of new rules that would give the U.S. government more control over applications that could pose a national security risk. Among them would be TikTok.

SL