Two US senators called TikTok a Chinese surveillance tool, issuing a bipartisan warning as the Biden administration weighs a deal that could let the video-sharing app keep operating in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just the content you upload to TikTok but all the data on your phone, other apps, all your personal information, even facial imagery, even where your eyes are looking on your phone,\u201d Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton said on \u201cFox News Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n
TikTok is \u201cone of the most massive surveillance programs ever, especially on America\u2019s young people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The app is \u201can enormous threat,\u201d Senate Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said on the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of that data that your child is inputting and receiving, is being stored somewhere in Beijing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden\u2019s administration is seeking a security agreement with TikTok to spare it from a US ban floated under his predecessor Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Critics remain concerned that data can leak to China via the popular app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd.<\/p>\n
Two influential Republican lawmakers, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, said this month they\u2019re introducing legislation\u00a0to ban TikTok<\/a><\/strong> from use in the US and criticised the Biden administration for taking insufficient action.<\/p>\n FBI Director Christopher Wray reiterated the bureau\u2019s national-security concerns last week, telling a House panel that potential Chinese government access to users\u2019 data or software is reason to be \u201cextremely concerned<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n The administration is weighing a proposal to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the US \u2014 where it has millions of mostly young users \u2014 under ByteDance ownership.<\/p>\n The arrangement would include routing US user traffic through servers maintained by Oracle Corp., with the US-based database giant auditing the app\u2019s algorithms.<\/p>\n TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew said last week that the company is working on an effort, called Project Texas, that will\u00a0isolate sensitive data<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0from its American users so that only staff in the US will have access.<\/p>\n Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, he called the effort \u201cextremely difficult and expensive to build,\u201d but aimed at the concerns of American officials.<\/p>\n TikTok has said that certain employees outside the US can access information from American users but denies that it is shared with the Chinese government.<\/p>\n Warner expressed skepticism, saying the code for the app is written in China and that it essentially serves a \u201cbroadcast medium\u201d that could attempt to sway app users on contentious issues like Taiwan.<\/p>\n Cotton renewed advice for Americans to delete the app and even get a new phone.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Justice Department is trying to come up with a solution,\u201d Warner said. \u201cI\u2019m going take a look at that solution, but they\u2019ve got a huge mountain to climb.\u201d<\/p>\n TikTok chief executive officer Shou Zi Chew said last week that the company is working on an effort, called Project Texas, that will\u00a0isolate sensitive data\u00a0from its American users so that only staff in the US will have access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":469917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[70866,437,2808,19937,59100,54329],"class_list":["post-469913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-president-joe-biden","tag-privacy","tag-social-media","tag-spying","tag-tiktok","tag-us-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469913"}],"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=469913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: DuckDuckGo launching anti-tracking tool for Android<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"