The US government has opened a national security investigation into Chinese-owned video app TikTok, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The report, citing anonymous sources, said that the review by an intergovernmental panel might be looking into whether the app, popular for its music videos, was sending data to China.
The investigation is led by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a government panel that reviews acquisitions in the US by foreign companies, the New York Times said.
The news came after lawmakers called for a review of the national security risks of TikTok, warning that it could be used for spying by Beijing.
A review could look into the 2017 acquisition of TikTok, which at the time was known as Musical.ly, by Beijing-based ByteDance.
The deal gave the Chinese company the app, which has been popular with youth for homemade karaoke videos and which now has an estimated 500 million users worldwide.
US Senator Marco Rubio hailed the news about the review.
“Last month I asked @USTreasury to conduct a CFIUS review of @tiktok_us,” Rubio said on Twitter. “Because any platform owned by a company in #China which collects massive amounts of data on Americans is a potential serious threat to our country.”
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Tom Cotton last week suggested that ByteDance could be forced to share user information with Chinese intelligence.
“With over 110 million downloads in the US alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore,” the two senators said in a letter to Acting US Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
The senators also warned that TikTok could potentially be used to influence voters in next year’s US presidential election in the same way Russians manipulated US social media in the 2016 campaign.
TikTok said that it could not comment on any regulatory matter, but added that it “has made clear that we have no higher priority than earning the trust of users and regulators in the US.”
Last week, TikTok sought to distance itself from China, saying: “We are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government.”
The company’s data centers are outside of China and “none of our data is subject to Chinese law,” it said.
The US Department of the Treasury, which coordinates CFIUS reviews, said that it could not comment on whether or not a review was in the works.
“By law, information filed with CFIUS may not be disclosed by CFIUS to the public,” a department spokesman said.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS