TikTok, ByteDance Ltd.\u2019s social media app, is facing broader scrutiny over its privacy policies, following a decision by the European Union\u2019s data protection chiefs to coordinate potential investigations.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s announcement by a panel of EU authorities follows the decision last month by the data-protection commission in the Netherlands to\u00a0open an investigation\u00a0into the company\u2019s policies to protect children\u2019s data, saying the app is \u201cclearly loved\u201d by Dutch kids.<\/p>\n
The company, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has been grappling with mounting questions from U.S. policy makers over whether it jeopardizes national security. It rejects the notion it\u2019s controlled by the Chinese government or that user data is at risk.<\/p>\n
The 27-nation EU has some of the strictest data-protection laws in the world. The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, gives EU authorities the power to fine companies as much as 4% of global annual sales for the most serious violations.<\/p>\n
The EU group of regulators in their statement also expressed \u201cconcerns regarding certain developments in\u00a0facial recognition\u00a0technologies,\u201d in response to questions about the use by police forces of such technologies by Clearview AI, a startup that\u2019s scraped billions of photos from social media accounts with the aim of helping law enforcement find suspects without criminal records.<\/p>\n
TikTok said in an emailed statement that the company\u2019s \u201ctop priority is protecting our users\u2019 privacy and safety\u201d and that it is \u201chappy to cooperate\u201d with the EU watchdogs.<\/p>\n
Clearview AI said its \u201cimage-search technology is not currently available\u201d in the EU, but that the company \u201cprocesses data-access and data-deletion requests from EU residents.\u201d The firm \u201csearches the public internet just like any other search engine,\u201d its Chief Executive Officer Hoan Ton-That said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The EU authorities said they have \u201cdoubts\u201d whether there\u2019s a legal basis for using a service such as Clearview AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs it stands and without prejudice to any future or pending investigation, the lawfulness of such use by EU law enforcement authorities cannot be ascertained,\u201d the group said. \u201cThe use of a service such as Clearview AI by law enforcement authorities in the European Union would, as it stands, likely not be consistent with the EU data protection regime.\u201d<\/p>\n
TikTok, ByteDance Ltd.\u2019s social media app, is facing broader scrutiny over its privacy policies, following a decision by the European Union\u2019s data protection chiefs to coordinate potential investigations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":306984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[46251,59100],"class_list":["post-355827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-bytedance","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}