TikTok: CEO will testify to US Congress – 03/03/2023 – Tech

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before the US Congress on March 23 to clarify whether the app puts the safety of US citizens at risk.

The hearing was convened by the Energy and Commerce Committee of the US Congress to also address the social network’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the impact on children, shortly after the Republicans assumed a majority in the House this year.

Since October, TikTok parent company ByteDance has been the target of allegations of spying on US journalists. In December, it confirmed to Forbes magazine that employees accessed platform data to spy on journalists at the Financial Times and BuzzFeed News.

TikTok has since emphasized its transparency policy and was, for example, the first social network to show parts of its source code to a group of US journalists in February.

A Sheetthe Brazilian representation of ByteDance says it will share its plans at the hearing and expects a more deliberative approach from parliamentarians.

“We appreciate the opportunity to be able, before the Energy and Commerce Committee of the United States House, to offer clarification regarding TikTok, Bytedance, and the commitment that we are adopting to address the concerns of American congressmen with national security”, he says. .

The social network has been in the sights of the US administration since the government of Republican Donald Trump, who tried to pressure, in 2020, the sale of the company’s local operation to a national company. Microsoft and Oracle were in the game, but ByteDance decided to resist in court.

Democrat Joe Biden stopped negotiations after taking over in 2021. Currently, the company is negotiating an agreement to keep app data processing in the United States on US territory.

“There are a series of technical measures, network architecture and data flow design, which can bring more comfort to the US”, says Rafael Zanatta, director of Associação Data Privacy Brasil de Pesquisa.

The congressional commission claims that it has already heard from representatives of other technology giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Google — “big tech is increasingly a destructive force in American society”, they said in a note.

Understand what is behind the judgment.

How did the data security risk allegations against TikTok come about?
In October, Forbes magazine denounced ByteDance’s plans to monitor the location of US citizens who allegedly posed a danger to the company. The person responsible for the project would be the internal audit and risk control executive Song Ye.

The focus of the project would be on the company’s employees, but documents that Forbes had access to indicated that at least two people outside of big tech were spied on.

At the time, the company did not specify whether it aimed to surveil government officials, state officials or other civil society actors, but, in December, it confirmed that the targets of the snooping were journalists from the Financial Times and Buzzfeed News.

According to the company, the reason would have been the investigation of a possible case of leakage of information to the press. The four employees who accessed data improperly were fired.

The use of metadata for economic purposes is common, but the purposes must be clearly presented to the data subject, according to Rafael Zanatta, from Data Privacy Brasil. “The use for the purpose of systematically monitoring a person for the purpose of producing individualized reports is a violation of fundamental rights.”

What data was consulted by the TikTok team?
TikTok does not store geolocation data. To infer the approximate location of the spying target, the company would have crossed the IP address (a kind of trace left on the internet) with other personal information.

In Brazil, geolocation data is not considered sensitive and may be processed for specific purposes. Some US states, such as California, however, consider the leak of georeferenced information to be a crime.

Following the Forbes allegations, US lawmakers expressed concern about the security of user data and the access of Chinese employees of the company to information about Americans.

How did the US Congress react?
In late 2022, the Senate passed a bill to veto the use of TikTok on all devices provided by the US government. President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law on December 30, 2022.

Three Republican legislators have even proposed banning the short video social network from operating in US territory.

CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony was determined by the US Congressional Energy and Commerce Committee shortly after Republicans took over the House this year. The commission, however, is divided equally between the two main parties of the world’s largest economy – there are 26 Democrats and 26 Republicans.

According to professor of international law José Augusto Fontoura, from USP, the policy of barring Chinese business is one of the few consensuses between the two parties in the United States.

TikTok poses a risk to US economic hegemony in internet applications. “There are researches that show that, while Instagram grew 40% of its base between 2018 and 2021, TikTok grew more than 600%”, says Zanatta, from DataPrivacy Brasil.

How has TikTok responded?
A person familiar with TikTok’s US office says representatives of the social network have strengthened dialogue with lawmakers to come up with proposals to strengthen data protection. One would be to keep all US data processing on the app under US jurisdiction.

Chinese giant ByteDance has also been investing in stocks to underscore its transparency. In early February, the company invited journalists from the United States to visit its transparency center. There, he showed reporters the application’s source code — it was the first time that a big tech had taken this initiative.

According to casey Newton, a journalist specializing in social media coverage, and podcaster for the New York Times, the excerpts reinforced old notions about these platforms —they are designed to retain the audience as long as possible. “Couldn’t see much beyond that.”

According to Newton, the big problem continues to be the storage of American data by a company at the mercy of the Chinese dictatorship.

According to the director of Data Privacy Brasil Rafael Zanatta, transparency and accountability obligations are the central element of bills that seek to regulate platforms like TikTok.

Has pressure on TikTok started now?
The offensive against the Chinese app began in Donald Trump’s government, which ended in January 2021, which also cited national security concerns.

Trump threatened to veto the application in the United States to try to force the purchase of the social video network by American companies. Microsoft and Oracle entered the dispute — the latter was more successful.

At the same time, ByteDance is fighting a legal dispute with the US Department of Commerce to avoid the closure of activities in the country.

President Joe Biden stopped in February 2021 the efforts of Oracle and Walmart, who had closed a consortium, to buy the North American operation of TikTok.

What can the US government do?
If it resumes plans to forcibly acquire the US operation of TikTok, the US government may separate the operation both in technical and operational terms, as well as commercial control, according to specialist José Augusto Fontoura.

This would not affect the Brazilian operation of the application, which would remain under the control of Chinese owners. In addition, TikTok’s US office does not work with the possibility of a ban in the country after receiving positive signals from local legislators, according to an interlocutor.

What interests are at stake?
Today, there is a dispute of interests between China and the United States in several sectors of the economy, which includes social networks. Therefore, Fontoura says that the political clash may have increased the effects of an offense committed by TikTok.

“I don’t think the Chinese are saints, but I doubt that Facebook, WhatsApp and other networks don’t misuse data”, says the USP law professor.

On the other hand, all these social networks and others managed in the United States are banned in China.

Zanatta, from DataPrivacy Brasil, recalls Edward Snowden’s complaint about the PRISM surveillance program, operated by the US agency NSA (National Security Agency, in free translation), which scoured data from Gmail, Youtube and Facebook chat.

The German Supreme Court also ruled, in 2023, that the use of personal data to prevent crimes is irregular, in a case involving the US company Palantir