TikTok is dealing with yet one more name from a outstanding lawmaker for the app’s ban, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, despatched to Apple and Google urging the businesses to ban TikTok from their respective app shops.
In the letter, Bennet says that “TikTok, in its current form, [is] an unacceptable threat to the national security of the United States.” The letter, addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, repeats lots of the similar factors which have been raised by different lawmakers in search of to ban the app.
Specifically, Bennet raises the chance that TikTok’s mum or dad firm, ByteDance, could possibly be compelled to “use its influence to advance Chinese government interests,” through TikTok. “Like most social media platforms, TikTok collects vast and sophisticated data from its users, including faceprints and voiceprints,” Bennet writes. “Unlike most social media platforms, TikTok poses a unique concern because Chinese law obligates ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent company, to ‘support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.’”
TikTok has lengthy denied that such eventualities may play out, and has tried its ties to China. In an announcement the corporate mentioned Bennet’s letter “relies almost exclusively on misleading reporting about TikTok, the data we collect, and our data security controls.”
Apple and Google didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
While it appears unlikely both firm would take such a drastic step based mostly on a letter from one senator, it highlights the mounting stress and scrutiny on TkTok. The firm has spent the final two years negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment within the United States (CFIUS) so as to safe its capacity to proceed to function within the US. But that course of is reportedly stalled, and the corporate has been waging a brand new in an try to win over critics.
TikTok has additionally been sharing extra round its partnership to safeguard US consumer knowledge and adjust to US regulators’ issues. But lawmakers appear to be in no rush to let TikTok off the hook. The app has already been banned from federal gadgets, and quite a few state governments have handed bans of their very own. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled at his first Congressional listening to subsequent month,
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