US set to ban Tiktok and Wechat downloads over data concerns
● Bid to ‘ combat China’s malicious collection of US citizens’ data’
The United States will ban the downloads of the Chinese apps Tiktok and Wechat from tomorrow, with a total ban on the use of the latter, citing national security and data privacy concerns.
A total ban on the use of TikTok will follow on 12 November, but commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said early yesterday on Fox Business News that access to that app may be possible if certain safeguards are put into place.
“At t he president’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rulesbased norms, and aggressive enforcement of US laws and regulations,” Mr Ross said in a prepared statement.
The government said its order, previously announced by US president Donald Trump in August, will “combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data”.
The government order also raises questions about California tech giant Oracle’s recent deal to take over US operations of Tiktok, a requirement by the Trump administration for the app to continue operating in the US.
Details of the Oracle- Tiktok deal were sketchy at best.
Oracle was among the pool of bidders, including Microsoft and Walmart, to buy TikTok’s American operations.
The tech company, in confirming it was the winning bidder on Monday, did not refer to the deal as a sale or acquisition, instead saying it was chosen as Tiktok’s “trusted technology provider”.
It is unclear at this point what assets, if any, Oracle would actually acquire.
Some security experts have raised concerns that Bytedance Ltd., the Chinese company that owns Tiktok, would maintain access to information on the 100 million Tiktok users in the United States, creating a security risk.
Like most social networks, Tiktok collects user data and moderates users’ posts. It grabs users’ locations and messages and t racks what they watch to figure out how best to target ads to them.
Similar concerns apply to US-based social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, but Chinese ownership adds an extra wrinkle because the Chinese government could order companies to help it gather intelligence. Tiktok says it does not store US user data in China and that it would not give user data to the government.
But experts say the Chinese government can get any information it wants from companies there.
The action is the Trump administration’ s latest attempt to weaken influence from China, a rising economic superpower.
Since taking office in 2017, Mr Trump has waged a trade war with China, blocked mergers involving Chinese companies and stifled the business of Chinese firms like Huawei, a maker of phones and telecom equipment.
China-backed hackers, meanwhile, have been blamed for data breaches of US federal databases and the credit agency Equifax.
The Chinese government strictly limits what US tech companies can do in China.
Republican and Democratic lawmaker concerns about Tiktok include its vulnerability to censorship and misinformation campaigns, and the safety of user data and children’s privacy. But the administration has provided no specific evidence that Tiktok has made US users’ data available to the Chinese government.
Officials point to the hypothetical threat that lies in the Chinese government’s ability to demand cooperation from Chinese companies.
India has already banned Tiktok and Wechat, as well as dozens of other Chinese apps.
The government in Delhi said the apps were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, [ and] defence of India”.
Before his disgrace in the Watergate affair, Richard Nixon was famous as the US president who went to China. The 1972 trip was a diplomatic masterstroke at a time when the Cold War was decidedly hot in places and also prompted the hitherto isolationist China to start engaging with the rest of the world, a key moment on its rise to becoming the second- biggest economy.
But while its economy has opened up, its government remains a brutal dictatorship – a place where dissidents are jailed for their opinions and where more than one million Uighurs and other minorities are estimated to have been forced into sinister
“re- education” camps – just as it was under Mao Zedong nearly half a century ago. So it is not surprising that there are tensions between China and the liberal democracies.
The UK government has decided to strip out equipment made by the Chinese company Huawei, founded by a former senior officer of China’s People’s Liberation Army, from the 5G network by 2027 because of concerns that information could be used for intelligence purposes. And now the US is to ban downloads of the popular Chinese apps Tiktok and Wechat because of national security and data privacy concerns. Normally there would be little question about whether the US was doing this for good reasons or bad. The evidence would be laid out for all to see, the case would be made in the UN, China would be given sufficient warnings to change its behaviour and only then action would be taken.
However, with Donald Trump in the White House, the suspicion is that this may be part of his attempts to turn China into a great external threat that requires a supposed “strongman” like him to control. In other words, Trump’s ban could be an election strategy and nothing to do with national security. The same can be said of his repeated references to Covid as a “Chinese virus” and suggestions it was developed deliberately in a laboratory as part of a bizarre plot to damage his re- election hopes.
Global free trade has helped the world become richer, but democratic countries need to find better ways to coax tyrannies towards freedom, before dictatorships like China become “too big to fail”, too important a part of the system. However, in order to do that, the West must set its own house in order, hopefully starting in November with the election of Joe Biden as the 46th US president.