Lauren Moye, FISM News
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The House of Representatives Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) just issued a new warning against the popular Chinese-owned TikTok app to representatives.
“TikTok is a Chinese-owned company, and any use of this platform should be done with that in mind,” the CAO warned in a recent letter to congressmen. “The ‘TikTok’ mobile application has been deemed by the CAO Office of CyberSecurity to be a high risk to users due to its lack of transparency in how it protects customer data, its requirement of excessive permissions, and the potential security risks involved with its use.”
According to the CAO, TikTok searches for and harvests sensitive biometric data like “voiceprints” and “faceprints” as well as storing location data from phones SIM cards, IP addresses, and metadata from uploaded photos and videos.
Researchers have discvoered that the data collected can be extensive, the CAO warned, right down to past wi-fi network connections, SIM card serial numbers, and clipboard access that can help identify login passwords for other apps.
Because of device mapping concerns that identify other apps on a mobile device, this could allow accounts to be easily hijacked by agencies and actors for foreign countries. For U.S. politicians who rely on social media to convey information to their constituents, this is a grave concern.
“To reiterate, we do not recommend the download or use of this application due to these security and privacy concerns,” the CAO concluded.
Despite the company’s promises to store user data outside of China, leaked audio reveals that Chinese employees accessed user data on multiple occasions. One of these employees was a member of the Trust and Safety Department according to a FISM report on June 28.
TikTok has been the source of recurring controversy among top U.S. leaders. Most recently, six Republican senators demanded that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen share actionable steps that the White House plans to take against the app.
The June 24 letter noted that the security review ordered by Biden had not been “publicly released after one year.”
In August 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the popular short video and music app in the U.S. due to concerns that the Chinese Communist Party would use “vast swaths of information” that might be used to track Federal employees, blackmail, and espionage.
In the same week, the Senate passed a unanimous vote to prevent the app on government-issued devices due to similar security concerns.
TikTok responded by suing the White House. They won a temporary injunction preventing the ban in September 2020. When Joe Biden took the presidency, he ordered a new review of security risks from the app but ultimately reversed Trump’s order in June 2021 for violating First Amendment rights.
TikTok approved a $92 million settlement over allegations of illegal data collection in Nov. 2021. The parent company, ByteDance, said they were not guilty of lawbreaking but did not want “lengthy litigation.”
Concerns regarding the app also involve fears that TikTok, along with other social media giants, has a negative impact on the mental and physical health of American adolescents. This led to a subcommittee investigation in Oct. 2021 and a separate bipartisan investigation by a group of eight attorneys general earlier this year.
No concrete steps against the app have been taken from these investigations. Some federal leaders, like Commissioner Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission, have directly petition Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc to remove the app from the Apple and GooglePlay stores in lieu of the Biden Administration’s inaction to protect sensitive American data.