FBI Director Christopher Wray told Homeland Security Committee House members Tuesday that the video-sharing app TikTok poses national security threats from the Chinese Communist Party.
Concerns from Wray and the FBI come off the heels of Federal Communications Commission officials urging the U.S. government to ban the app to protect American citizens’ private data, citing issues with controlling the information flow back to Beijing. TikTok officials denounced the federal agency’s accusations, saying FCC officials have no role in the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to the app.
“We do have national security concerns — at least from the FBI’s end — about TikTok,” Wray said in a hearing focused on Worldwide Threats to the Homeland. “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users. Or control the
recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose. Or to control software on millions of devices, which gives it opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices.”
Chinese tech giant ByteDance owns TikTok, which currently has more than 200 million downloads in the United States — and according to Fox Business, the company must share its data with the CCP upon request, as required by Chinese law.
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