TikTok should be banned for 'security' concerns, according to US commissioner

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr has stated that the US government should ban the video-sharing app TikTok. Speaking on Tuesday, Carr said, ‘I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban’ as per Foxbusiness.

Brendan Carr is one of five commissioners who lead the FCC, and he believes that they cannot be sure any data of American users on the app will not be accessible to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

200 million

The video-sharing platform has over 200 million downloads in the US alone and is an immensely popular app around the world. However, the app is owned by the Chinese tech giant, ByteDance, and companies must share their data with the CCP upon request from the Chinese government.

In this digital age where software and information are powerful tools for businesses and governments, TikTok has become contentious for the US government. An article on Axios reports:

The popular app is becoming a form of critical information infrastructure — making the app's ownership by a Chinese parent company a target of growing national security concern.

Carr’s concerns

Carr has been vocal in his consternation about the issue, as listed in an interview with Axios.

He has concerns about U.S. data flowing back to China and the risk of a state actor using TikTok to covertly influence political processes in the United States. He said:

There simply isn't 'a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party],

Carr also sent letters to Apple and Google in June asking the companies to remove the apps from their stores due to concerns about data flowing back to China.

TikTok have responded by saying they respect national data privacy legislation that applies to all companies and responded to Carr directly:

Commissioner Carr has no role in the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to TikTok and appears to be expressing views independent of his role as an FCC commissioner.

We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the U.S. Government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns.

Sources used:

- Foxbusiness 'FCC commissioner urges US government to ban TikTok'

- Axios 'FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok'