June 29th, 2022.
A Republican commissioner in the FCC has argued that TikTok should be removed from the app stores in the U.S.
Over a dozen leaked recordings from internal TikTok meetings show that the Chinese firm had accessed nonpublic data about the U.S.
TikTok had promised the Senate that a U.S. user data leak would not happen.
Carr wrote that TikTok was not what it appeared to be. It is more than just an app to share funny videos. The sheep has clothes. The core of TikTok is its ability to harvest extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.
TikTok is not just another video app.That’s the sheep’s clothing.It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.
I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn
Big Tech in the U.S. doesn't have federal privacy laws that apply to health care. The data of foreigners that is collected by Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and other companies can be accessed by the US intelligence agencies.
Two data-sharing agreements between Europe and the U.S. have already been sunk, and it is possible that American tech giants will not be able to import Europeans' personal data.
Carr expressed outrage that TikTok gathers everything from search and browsing histories to faceprints and voiceprints. Text, images, and videos that are stored on a device's clipboard are also collected.
Carr wrote that the list of personal and sensitive data it gathers goes on from there. It should come as no surprise. China has developed some of the most intrusive and inescapable spy capabilities in the world to maintain authoritarian control.
The commissioner said that there are bipartisan concerns about TikTok in the U.S.
TikTok was almost kicked out of the U.S. when Donald Trump ordered ByteDance to sell the app to a U.S. firm or face a ban. The deal to sell TikTok to Walmart and Oracle was put on hold due to legal challenges and the Trump-era ban threat.
Biden ordered a national security review of the app as well. Six Republican senators asked for an update on that last week.
The senators were not happy with the move of U.S. user data to the US from China.
Privacy lawsuits claimed that TikTok illegally gathered users' data and passed it on to third parties.
Ireland has jurisdiction over TikTok in Europe as its regional headquarters are in Dublin and is investigating the company over its transfers of personal data to China.
At the time of publication, all three companies had not responded to requests for comment.
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