When Grant Shapps was appointed as the UK’s defense minister this month, one of the first questions he faced was about his social media use. Shapps, previously energy minister, was one of the most prolific users of TikTok in the British government, and military experts and the media wanted to know whether he had the app on his phone. It’s already banned from official devices in Parliament. And the UK isn’t the only country that has grown increasingly nervous about the security risks of TikTok.
This year, one nation after another has banned TikTok from devices used by government staff and elected officials. Citing unspecified “national security risks,” the European Commission, European Union, and European Parliament introduced a ban on officials’ devices in March. The parliament later called on member states to do the same.
The reason for such circumspection across Europe? The thing that has blighted TikTok throughout its existence: It is owned by ByteDance, which is registered in the Cayman Islands, but whose management is based in Beijing. That connection to China, and the perceived risk—despite denials from TikTok representatives—that the company would have to accede to Chinese state demands to share data with the Communist Party government, have raised fears.
To try to reassure European governments, TikTok is spending €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) to build three new data centers—two in Ireland and one in Denmark—which means that, by the end of 2024, the data of users in the EU data won’t leave the jurisdiction. The data centers are part of a broader initiative that includes opening a European “transparency center” that regulators will be able to visit to learn more about how the app works. TikTok has also appointed an external consultant, UK-based NCC Group, to provide an independent assessment of its cybersecurity.
The plan, which TikTok calls Project Clover, is a hugely expensive, and very visible, attempt to prove that the platform is neither breaking EU laws on data transfers nor sending sensitive user data to China. “We believe that this is genuinely industry-leading,” says Theo Bertram, TikTok’s vice president of public policy in Europe. “No one else has done something like this.”
But it may not be enough. Suspicion of Chinese technology runs deep in some parts of the EU and in the UK, where senior intelligence officials have warned about Beijing’s growing threat in cyberspace.
“I don’t really know how this plays out,” Sam Sharps, executive director of policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, says. “And whether the reassurances they give—even if today, they meet the best standards of investigations of data protection authorities around Europe—are at a political level going to be enough.”
TikTok has around 150 million users in Europe, many of whom are committed to the short-form video platform, spending around 90 minutes or more on the app every day, according to the company’s own data. It’s hugely popular, with a younger, more dedicated user base than competitors in the social space.
Read the full article here
