US FCC chief warns armed forces 'Tiktok a national security threat’, spy tool for China

Military faimiles and the troops that have a presence on Chinese-based video app TikTok may be jeopardising the national security, US Federal Communications Commission (US FCC) chief Brendan Carr warned in a letter to lawmakers. The app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance might be compromising sensitive, as well as highly confidential defense related data to the Chinese government, the senior regulator on the Federal Communications Commission stressed.

He forbade the friends and family of military members from using the Chinese app even as it is banned by the government from the devices of the US armed forces.

Tiktok 'going in military installations, looking at location data': Carr 

“With TikTok, this is a device right in your pocket. It’s going inside the military installation, looking at location data, which can give people information on troop movements,” Carr said in his letter. “There’s a range of ways that that sensitive data going back to Beijing with their sophisticated [artificial intelligence] can ultimately be used to harm US national security," he continued in his latest warning. 

According to Carr, China has "repeatedly accessed" Americans’ user data and any information that the Americans upload may be spied on by the Chinese government via TikTok. “The flow of this non-public sensitive data into China is particularly troubling given the [People’s Republic of China’s] track record of engaging in espionage and other nefarious acts,” Carr said.

“It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data,” Carr reminded in the letter.

Carr reminded that the app has been functioning as "sophisticated surveillance tool" for PRC. China "harvests extensive amounts of sensitive data from search and browsing history, keystroke patterns, location data, and biometrics including face prints and voice prints. All of the concerns with TikTok are heightened in the military context," he warned.

Tiktok a 'surveillance tool for China'

In earlier tweets, the US FCC chief had claimed that TikTok is “not just another video app” but a surveillance tool for China, and therefore needed careful monitoring. He also addressed a letter to Apple's CEO Tim Cook and the CEO of Alphabet [parent company of Google], Sundar Pichai, demanding that they remove the app from the platforms over threat to national security.

TikTok “collects vast troves of sensitive data” that it harvests online from the US users who are registered on the app, Carr said on Thursday, adding that the company then shares the compiled data with China’s government. US regulator was referring to a recent BuzzFeed report that investigated the "leaked audios" from at least 80 internal TikTok meetings. The investigative report made explosive claim that the China-based ByteDance “repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users" and shared it with the Chinese government officials. 

TikTok's parent firm ByteDance although issued a statement refuting such claims, saying that it would “gladly engage” with the US lawmakers and prove that the claims of spying and data harvesting are "misleading".

“Like many global companies, TikTok has engineering teams around the world. We employ access controls like encryption and security monitoring to secure user data, and the access approval process is overseen by our US-based security team," said ByteDance in its response statement. "TikTok has consistently maintained that our engineers in locations outside of the U.S., including China, can be granted access to US user data on an as-needed basis under those strict controls," it went on to clarify.