The US should ban video-sharing app TikTok to protect the private data of American citizens, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr said on Tuesday. Carr, one of the five commissioners who lead the FCC, argued in an interview with Axios that there is no way to have “enough confidence” that Americans’ data on the app is not being sent back to Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). . ). TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, and Chinese law requires companies to share their data with the central counterparty upon request. TikTok is currently in wrangling with the US Council on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) to determine whether ByteDance can divest the app and operate it in the US, something former President Donald Trump sought before leaving the power. Carr says data protection won’t be secure enough, no matter what deal is reached. TIKTOK ADDICTION: INSIDERS GO ON ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA AND WHAT’S BEHIND THE APP’S ‘MASS’ INFLUENCE Video-sharing app TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, and Chinese law requires companies to share their data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) upon request. President Xi Jinping, it seems, is the head of the CCP. (Xinhua via Getty Images) FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr testifies during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on March 31, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images/Getty Images) “I don’t believe there’s a path forward for anything other than a ban,” he told Axios, adding that there isn’t “a world in which you could find adequate protection for data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not found again her way into the hands of the KKK”. STUDY FINDS 10% OF US ADULTS USE TIKTOK TO GET THEIR NEWS REGULARLY, UP FROM 3% IN 2020 TikTok pushed back against Carr in a statement to Axios, arguing that the commissioner has no role in the dispute with CFIUS. The FCC has no authority to regulate TikTok, so Carr and others critical of the Chinese apps have urged other federal agencies and Congress to take action. “Commissioner Carr has no role in confidential discussions with the US government related to TikTok and appears to be expressing opinions independent of his role as an FCC commissioner,” TikTok told Axios in a statement on Tuesday. “We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the US government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns.” Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington, DC, August 29, 2020. (Reuters/Andrew Kelly/File/Reuters) While TikTok representatives have insisted that user data is safe, company executives have admitted under oath that the data is being accessed from China. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT FOX BUSINESS This access is also often used, as revealed in an extensive report by BuzzFeed earlier this year. The outlet obtained audio from more than 80 internal meetings at TikTok, showing that US employees did not have access to user data and instead relied on Chinese employees to do so.
