TikTok CEO faces off with Congress over safety fears

WASHINGTON — 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 information safety and person security whereas he makes his personal case for why the massively fashionable video-sharing app should not be banned.

Shou Zi Chew’s testimony comes at a vital time for the corporate, which has acquired 150 million American customers however is beneath growing 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.

Chew, a 40-year-old Singapore native, is making a uncommon public look to counter the volley of accusations that TikTok has been going through. On Wednesday, the corporate despatched dozens of fashionable TikTokers to Capitol Hill to foyer lawmakers to protect the platform. It has additionally been placing up adverts throughout Washington that tout guarantees of securing customers information and privateness and making a secure platform for its younger customers.

Chew plans to inform the U.S. Home Committee on Power and Commerce that TikTok prioritizes the protection of its younger customers and deny allegations that the app is a nationwide safety threat, in keeping with his ready remarks launched forward of the listening to.

TikTok has been dogged by claims that its Chinese language possession means person information may find yourself within the fingers 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 ensure once more that the People, nationwide safety is protected as nicely. ”

For its half, TikTok has been making an attempt 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 traders 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 imposing it.

Specialists says officers may attempt to pressure Apple and Google to take away TikTok from their app shops, stopping new customers from downloading it in addition to stopping present customers from updating it, in the end rendering it ineffective.

The U.S. may additionally block entry to TikTok’s infrastructure and information, seize its domains or pressure web service suppliers like Comcast and Verizon to filter TikTok information site visitors, stated Ahmed Ghappour, a prison legislation and pc safety professional who academics at Boston College Faculty of Legislation.

However a tech savvy person may nonetheless get round restrictions by utilizing a digital personal community to make it seem the person is out of the country the place it is not blocked, he stated.

To keep away from a ban, TikTok has been making an attempt to promote officers on a $1.5 billion plan known as Undertaking Texas, which routes all U.S. person information to home servers owned and maintained by software program big Oracle. Underneath the challenge, entry to U.S. information is managed by U.S. workers by way of a separate entity known as TikTok U.S. Information 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 information was being saved contained in the nation. The corporate began deleting all historic U.S. person information from non-Oracle servers this month, in a course of anticipated to be accomplished later this 12 months, Chew stated.

Various 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 issues.

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 limiting TikTok entry on government-issued telephones as a result of they could comprise delicate army info or different confidential materials. A nationwide ban, nevertheless, may be too excessive, he stated. He additionally puzzled the place it would lead.

“We now have Tesla in China, we have now Microsoft in China, we have now Apple in China. Are they going to start out banning us now?” Kennedy stated. “It may escalate in a short time.”

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Chan reported from London.