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WASHINGTON (AP) — The CEO of TikTok will make a high-profile look Thursday earlier than a U.S. Congressional committee, the place he’ll face a grilling on knowledge safety and person security whereas he makes his personal case for why the massively well-liked video-sharing app shouldn’t be banned.
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Shou Zi Chew’s testimony comes at a vital time for the corporate, which has acquired 150 million American customers however is below rising strain from U.S. officers. TikTok and its mum or dad firm ByteDance have been swept up in a wider geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington over commerce and know-how.
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Chew, a 40-year-old Singapore native, is making a uncommon public look to counter the volley of accusations that TikTok has been dealing with. On Wednesday, the corporate despatched dozens of well-liked TikTokers to Capitol Hill to foyer lawmakers to protect the platform. It has additionally been placing up advertisements throughout Washington that tout guarantees of securing customers knowledge and privateness and making a secure platform for its younger customers.
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Chew plans to inform the U.S. Home Committee on Vitality and Commerce that TikTok prioritizes the protection of its younger customers and deny allegations that the app is a nationwide safety danger, in response to his ready remarks launched forward of the listening to.
TikTok has been dogged by claims that its Chinese language possession means person knowledge might find yourself within the palms of the Chinese language authorities or that it might be used to advertise narratives favorable to the nation’s Communist leaders.
“We perceive the recognition of Tiktok, we get that,” stated White Home press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at a press convention Wednesday afternoon. “However the President’s job is to verify once more that the Individuals, nationwide safety is protected as nicely. ”
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For its half, TikTok has been attempting to distance itself from its Chinese language origins, saying that 60% p.c of its mum or dad firm ByteDance is owned by international institutional buyers equivalent to Carlyle Group. ByteDance was based by Chinese language entrepreneurs in Beijing in 2012.
“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is just not an agent of China or another nation,” Chew stated.
A U.S. ban on an app can be unprecedented and it’s unclear how the federal government would go about implementing it.
Specialists says officers might attempt to pressure Apple and Google to take away TikTok from their app shops, stopping new customers from downloading it in addition to stopping current customers from updating it, in the end rendering it ineffective.
The U.S. might additionally block entry to TikTok’s infrastructure and knowledge, seize its domains or pressure web service suppliers like Comcast and Verizon to filter TikTok knowledge site visitors, stated Ahmed Ghappour, a prison regulation and laptop safety professional who lecturers at Boston College Faculty of Regulation.
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However a tech savvy person might nonetheless get round restrictions by utilizing a digital non-public community to make it seem the person is in a foreign country the place it’s not blocked, he stated.
To keep away from a ban, TikTok has been attempting to promote officers on a $1.5 billion plan referred to as Mission Texas, which routes all U.S. person knowledge to home servers owned and maintained by software program large Oracle. Below the venture, entry to U.S. knowledge is managed by U.S. workers via a separate entity referred to as TikTok U.S. Knowledge Safety, which employs 1,500 folks, is run independently of ByteDance and can be monitored by exterior observers.
As of October, all new U.S. person knowledge was being saved contained in the nation. The corporate began deleting all historic U.S. person knowledge from non-Oracle servers this month, in a course of anticipated to be accomplished later this yr, Chew stated.
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Plenty of Western nations together with Denmark, Canada, and New Zealand, together with the European Union, have already banned TikTok from gadgets issued to authorities workers, citing cybersecurity considerations.
Within the U.S., the federal authorities, Congress, the armed forces and greater than half of states have banned the app from official gadgets.
David Kennedy, a former authorities intelligence officer who runs the cybersecurity firm TrustedSec, agrees with proscribing TikTok entry on government-issued telephones as a result of they could include delicate navy data or different confidential materials. A nationwide ban, nevertheless, may be too excessive, he stated. He additionally questioned the place it would lead.
“We’ve Tesla in China, we’ve Microsoft in China, we’ve Apple in China. Are they going to begin banning us now?” Kennedy stated. “It might escalate in a short time.”
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Chan reported from London.
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