US Identifies Chinese Owned Video App TikTok As Potential National Risk, Launches Security Probe

The US has launched an national security review of the video-sharing app TikTok following apprehensions expressed by US senators, Financial Times reported.

The US Treasury will probe the Chinese technology company ByteDance's 1 acquisition of Musical.ly in 2017. The $1bn purchase enabled the explosive growth of TikTok in U.S.

Senator Marco Rubio last month called for a national-security review of the 2017 deal. Rubio claimed that TikTok is censoring content at the behest of China. He accused the widely popular app of blocking sympathetic coverage of protests in Hong Kong and reports about China’s treatment of Muslim minorities.

The probe will be undertaken by Cfius (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States), the division of the US Treasury which checks foreign purchases of US companies on security grounds.

ByteDance did not seek the approval of Cfius in 2017 as Musical.ly was a Chinese-based company.

FT report however quoted national security law analysts as saying that while the law may apply broadly to US businesses it can probe the US operations of foreign groups in sensitive sectors.

TikTok rejected claims of censorship saying that its content moderation policies aren’t influenced by any government and that the Chinese government hasn’t requested that TikTok censor content.

Reacting to the announcement of the probe, Rubio said “I remain deeply concerned that any platform or application that has Chinese ownership or direct links to China, such as TikTok, can be used as a tool by the Chinese Communist party to extend its authoritarian censorship of information outside China’s borders and amass data on millions of unsuspecting users.

ByteDance is the latest Chinese technology company targetted by the US regulators.

On October 7, the US announced that it was blocking a group of leading Chinese technology companies from buying US-made goods on the grounds of complicity in perpetrating human rights abuses in Xinjiang province of China.

The US Commerce Department, in a statement, said the entities had been targeted over the “brutal suppression” of Uygur Muslims and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang province..  China has been accused of detaining more than a million ethnic Uygurs in state run ‘concentration camps’

The expanded blacklist released by US Commerce Department includes 20 local public security bureaus in Xinjiang and eight technology majors, including Hikvision and Zhejiang Dahua Technology, two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance products.

The list also included leaders in facial recognition technology, SenseTime Group and Megvii Technology, as well as other companies that specialise in voice recognition and data – iFlytek, Xiamen Meiya Pico Information and Yixin Science and Technology.

The Commerce Department had previously added Huawei and more than 100 affiliates to the export restriction list, for having close links with the Chinese government, military or intelligence services.