The US government values data privacy and security for its employees and the American public. Such value makes data security a national interest, and risks to the national interest can be considered threats to national security.
For the past year, the Trump administration has poked and prodded the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok on its "data privacy practices"--its largest concern being Chinese government access to TikTok user data. For many officials, the national security threat lies in TikTok's, and potentially the Chinese government's, ability to collect data on US citizens--including government employees with access to sensitive information. In response to the risk, President Trump's recent executive orders placed an effective ban on transactions between TikTok and US consumers in the coming weeks and pushed TikTok's parent company ByteDance to sell its US assets in the next 90 days. The Federal Trade Commission also asserts that TikTok "illegally collected personal information from minors"--this violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act as well as the national interest. The presence of disinformation on the app, TikTok's response to disinformation, and concerns of political censorship may be separate issues, but they tie into risk assessment of TikTok as a threat to national security.
ByteDance has tried to distance itself from its Chinese origins and insists that it does not pass its data to the Chinese government, and TikTok received its first American chief executive officer in June of this year. But the risk remains, with further implications for data collection and mobile apps based in other countries. According to Lawfare, the FBI has received letters citing concern of security risks in Russian mobile apps; but where should the US draw the line? Which apps are deemed acceptable, and which are risky enough to warrant a threat to national security? The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) habitually answers a similar question relating to foreign capital and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the US, but this type of data collection more directly concerns data privacy and security of US citizens and the US government--in other words, the national interest.
1 comment:
In response to the three ring circus we call TikTok, it is first and foremost a tool of entertainment. With that said, there are many people who utilize it for other reasons. For instance, someone from a foreign intelligence department searching through data that has been collected without the knowledge of the people or their government’s knowledge, either.
So how do we consider one app from being acceptable versus unacceptable ? We start with what we hold scared to ourselves because that is what we hold dear and to be true for us individually. With regards to TikTok, if some of the sign up information lands in the hands of say a foreign intelligency then we could begin to have issues of accounts being hacked; and so forth. Apps are considered risky after they have caused some kind of issue within the national security administration that threatens our way of life.
We should be focusing more on our national interest and looking at the much bigger picture in front of us. We need to be focusing on what we can do to improve out homelands. We need to be coming together to figure out the best methods for us to accomplish securing out nation’s “national interests”. What are we willing to give up in order to keep our privacy? Do we allow the government to keep “protecting us” as they would call it?
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