Republican Senators Question Joe Biden's Government Willingness To Protect TikTok User Data

The security of TikTok user data is again in question. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA - Six U.S. Republican senators on Friday, June 24 asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about the Joe Biden administration's ongoing national security review of the social media platform TikTok.

The US Government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks, in 2020 ordered TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest TikTok over concerns that US user data could be passed on to the government. communist china..

Last week, TikTok said it had completed migrating information about US users to servers at Oracle Corp, as it seeks to address US concerns over data integrity.

Senators Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse, Mike Braun, Marco Rubio, Todd Young and Roger Wicker asked Yellen multiple questions saying that the government "appears to be doing nothing to enforce" the August 2020 divestment order." They noted "the results of the security review, as well. , hasn't been released to the public after a year."

Senators wanted to know "will TikTok be managed locally in the United States?" and "Does the US government have the ability to regularly access and inspect the algorithm's source code?". They also asked "what assurances does the US government have that TikTok will retain US data and adopt a privacy policy with adequate safeguards?"

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Former US President Donald Trump had attempted to block new users from downloading WeChat and TikTok and banned other transactions that would have effectively blocked use of the app in the United States but lost a series of court battles.

President Joe Biden in June 2021 withdrew a series of executive orders during the Trump presidency seeking to ban new downloads of apps and ordered the Commerce Department to conduct a review of the security issues raised by the app.

Senators said TikTok's proposal to store US user information without ByteDance access "would do little to address core security concerns."

"CFIUS has had extensive discussions with TikTok on security issues," a source said.

TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the world, with more than 1 billion active users globally, making the US its largest market.