A member of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has asked Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores, citing concerns that the popular Chinese-owned video app could send Personally Identifiable Information back to China declaring the app a national security risk.
In a letter to the companies released on Tuesday, Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner, said he believed that “TikTok’s pattern of conduct and misrepresentations regarding the unfettered access that persons in Beijing have to sensitive U.S. user data” violated Apple’s and Google’s standards and that TikTok should be taken out of the app stores.
Leaked audio from TikTok internal meetings indicated that China could access all user data from September 2021 to January 2022.
In the letter, Carr lists multiple instances of the company running afoul of various privacy and data security laws around the world. He’s asking Google and Apple to remove the ability to use the app on their phones.
If they refuse to do so by July 8, he’s demanding a response from them explaining “the basis for your company’s conclusion that the surreptitious access of private and sensitive U.S. user data by persons located in Beijing, coupled with TikTok’s pattern of misleading representations and conduct, does not run afoul of any of your app store policies.”
The letter comes after U.S. news outlet Buzzfeed reported last week that data on U.S. users has been repeatedly accessed by entities in mainland China. TikTok subsequently announced that it plans “to delete U.S. users’ private data from our own data centres and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S.,” the company said.
