China has plenty of other paths toward spying on Americans and could potentially obtain similar social media data, including deep banks of location information, from shady brokers that trade in app data. Still, those missteps and TikTok’s Chinese ownership don’t amount to a smoking gun. Four ByteDance employees were fired, but the incident is a lingering black eye for a company eager to build trust with regulators abroad. Last year, TikTok confirmed reporting that ByteDance employees tracked journalists’ IP addresses through the app in a scheme to crack down on internal leaks. and made changes to the way it stores user data, the company is plagued by its own past mistakes. While TikTok has gone on a public relations charm offensive in the U.S. And China has come out strongly against a potential forced sale of the company - an event that the Chinese government would be within its rights to block, given changes to export rules in late 2020. The government has been known to take a stake in private companies and shape their boards in order to influence decision making. While there is no evidence to date that Beijing has leveraged the wildly popular social app for spying, that threat isn’t out of the question.Ĭhina exerts great influence on private companies operating there. and elsewhere cite nonspecific security concerns over TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. TikTok is also funding a separate lawsuit by creators who oppose the Montana ban, though the company wasn’t initially open about its involvement. This month, tech industry groups NetChoice and Chamber of Progress backed TikTok’s lawsuit to block the ban, arguing that “Montana’s effort to cut Montanans off from the global network of TikTok users ignores and undermines the structure, design, and purpose of the internet.” TikTok pushed back with a lawsuit aiming to keep the app available to Montanans. Unlike other state-level action, the ban is not limited to government-issued devices and would also limit normal users’ access to the popular app. In May, Montana governor Greg Gianforte signed a law that bans TikTok in the state, effective starting in 2024. “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said in his opening statements. TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, setting it apart from other major social media companies based in the U.S. In March, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress, enduring five hours of questioning from lawmakers over concerns that China might leverage the app to compromise national security. Earlier this year, the Biden administration escalated its own pressure campaign against the app in an effort to force TikTok to part ways with its Chinese ownership. House of Representatives banned the use of TikTok on government devices in December. Many other states have issued their own bans in recent years, including New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Georgia. The state of New York also issued its own ban against TikTok on government devices in 2020. NYC Cyber Command, which focuses on cyber threats for the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, recommended the ban following a security review. The Verge reported the new ban, which is effective immediately and instructs agencies to delete the app from city-owned hardware within 30 days. New York City becomes the latest government to issue new rules banning TikTok, a measure meant to ward off potential security threats from China.
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