Potential national security risks of foreign-owned Temu and TikTok
WASHINGTON (TND) — There are growing concerns around foreign-owned applications, especially Temu and TikTok, and their potential threats to U.S. national security.
Temu is a budget, shopping app with over 50 million downloads on Google globally, offering clothes, home goods, and many other items for extremely low prices.
Many people say the app, owned by a Chinese company called PDD Holdings, is in direct competition with Amazon and highlight a couple of concerns with its operations.
The Select House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) released a report saying Temu is not taking enough precautions to make sure its suppliers are not using forced labor in China.The report also accuses Temu of relying on a federal threshold rule called De Minimis Value. The U.S. trade rule has been around since 1983 and gives tax exemptions and less oversight to shipped goods under $800.
Lawmakers have recently introduced bipartisan bills to exclude China from that rule.
In March, Google suspended Temu's Chinese version of the platform, Pinduoduo, from its app store because it found malicious software. It was, however, made available again in app stores last month.
Temu's cybersecurity concerns are also putting focus back on issues surrounding TikTok.
The platform is working against a potential ban here in the U.S. amid national security concerns.
In a response to a bipartisan probe from Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, the social media platform said "certain creator data" is not protected, meaning some personal information of American creators who make money from TikTok is stored in China.
We've established now time and time again that the Chinese Communist Party can access that data if the data is stored in China," said Jake Denton, a research associate for the Tech Policy Center at The Heritage Foundation. “It's clearly a national security threat, having U.S. data stored in China is unacceptable."TikTok has not been asked for U.S. user data by the Chinese government or the CCP. TikTok has not provided such data to the Chinese government or CCP, nor would TikTok do so," TikTok explained in the letter.
Forbes is reporting a draft of the agreement between the Biden Administration and TikTok would provide the American government complete access to TikTok's internal information and "unprecedented" control over the app's essential functions.
According to Forbes, agencies like the Justice and Defense Departments would have the authority to examine TikTok's U.S. facilities, records, equipment, and servers with no notice.
“If this agreement would give the U.S. government the power to dictate what content TikTok can or cannot carry, or how it makes those decisions, that would raise serious concerns about the government’s ability to censor or distort what people are saying or watching on TikTok,” Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, told Forbes.TikTok did not validate the draft. Forbes said they did not provide TikTok with a copy of the draft agreement in order to protect sources.
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