Remove TikTok from Apple and Android app stores, urges US official
The app poses a serious national security risk, says FCC commissioner Brendan Carr
US FCC commissioner Brendan Carr has urged Apple and Google to stop offering TikTok in their app stores, saying the popular Chinese-owned social video app poses a serious national security risk and may send sensitive personal data to Beijing.
In a letter to the companies made public on Tuesday, Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner, said he believed TikTok's pattern of misrepresentations regarding the unrestrained access that persons in China have to sensitive American users' data violates the standards of both companies.
"TikTok is not what it appears to be on the surface. It is not just an app for sharing funny videos or meme. That's the sheep's clothing," Carr said in the letter.
"At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data."
In the event that Apple and Google do not remove the app from their respective app stores by July 8th, Carr is demanding a response from them explaining the basis for their decision.
TikTok has insisted that it takes measures to prevent its employees in China from having access to its data.
However, US news outlet Buzzfeed revealed this month that mainland Chinese firms had frequently accessed non-public data on US customers.
The publication said its report was based on multiple leaked recordings from internal TikTok meetings.
The report also indicated that employees working for TikTok in the US "had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how US user data was flowing," despite the fact that TikTok had assured the Senate that a security team based in the US had those controls.
Following the Buzzfeed report, TikTok said it intends to remove US users' private data from its own data centres and move it entirely to Oracle cloud servers situated in the US.
Carr said in his letter that he did not feel that TikTok's efforts would make a difference.
The hugely popular short video app, which is owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance, has already drawn criticism in multiple countries for having ties to the Chinese government.
In the US, former president Donald Trump even attempted to ban the app by executive order.
In 2020, Oracle announced a plan in which it would acquire a portion of the Chinese firm, although the deal was never completed.
A national security review of the app was commissioned by Joe Biden after he was elected president; the review is still underway. Last week, six Republican senators requested the Treasury Department to provide an update on the review.
In 2020, India banned TikTok in a targeted move to 'ensure the safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace', and the Australian government is presently contemplating whether to follow suit.
In a statement to CNBC, a TikTok spokesperson said, "Like many global companies, TikTok has engineering teams around the world. We employ access controls like encryption and security monitoring to secure user data, and the access approval process is overseen by our US-based security team."
"TikTok has consistently maintained that our engineers in locations outside of the US, including China, can be granted access to US user data on an as-needed basis under those strict controls."