Brandan Carr, a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), revealed on June 28 that he had sent a letter to Google and Apple asking them to remove TikTok from the App Store and the Play Store. A requirement linked to due disclosures BuzzFeed earlier in the month.
TikTok transfers US user data to Oracle
In a detailed investigation, based, among other things, on the recordings of 80 internal meetings at TikTok, BuzzFeed revealed that Chinese employees of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, had access between September 2021 and January 2022 to sensitive data of American users, despite past declarations.
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In parallel with the publication of the article, on June 17, TikTok reacted by assuring ” remove US users’ private data from our own data centers and pivot entirely to Oracle’s cloud servers located in the US “. The company clarified, We still use our US and Singaporean data centers for backup, but as we continue our work, we plan to remove US users’ private data from our own data centers “.
The social network was negotiating with Oracle and the Commission on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) this long-standing transfer. It concerns above all the most sensitive data, not accessible via the application such as birthdays. For Brandan Carr this response “ does not address the concern raised here “.
For Brandan Carr the social network remains a threat
According to him ” TikTok has long claimed that its US users’ data is stored on servers in the United States, but those statements offered no protection against access to that data from Beijing. “.
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
—Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022
Brandan Carr, appointed to the FCC by Donald Trump in 2018 for 5 years, takes up a reproach made to TikTok and its parent company for several years. ByteDance being a Chinese company, Beijing has the possibility of requiring access to its data.
A threat that concerns American and European users as soon as their information is stored in data centers belonging to the company, regardless of their location. In his article, BuzzFeed demonstrates TikTok’s difficulties in separating the management of its American data from others.
The Trump administration tried in 2020 to ban TikTok in the United States, like India. His successor, Joe Biden, lifted the threat of a ban, but demanded an investigation into the supervision of applications under “foreign adversary jurisdiction”.
For Brandan Carr, “ It’s clear that TikTok poses unacceptable national security risks because of Beijing’s seemingly uncontrolled access to this sensitive data. “.
Google and Apple have until July 8 to respond.
As a result, he asked Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook, CEOs of Google and Apple respectively, to remove the app. Neither Google, nor Apple, nor TikTok have responded to the American press at the time these lines are written.
Brandan Carr has asked both companies to comply by July 8. In case of refusal they will have to justify themselves to the commissioner of the ” basis for your firm’s conclusion that the surreptitious access to private and sensitive U.S. user data by individuals located in Beijing, coupled with TikTok’s series of misleading statements and behaviors, is not inconsistent with ‘none of your app store policies “.
The TikTok case seems to be revived in the United States, however it is notable that Brandan Carr was the only one of the four FCC commissioners to sign the mail addressed to Google and Apple. This could mean that his colleagues have no intention of following him at the moment.
