 Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, acting in its official capacity as an EU privacy guardian, recently fined TikTok $600 million (€530 million) for breaching its data privacy rules. This punishment was meted out after the conclusion of a four-year investigation, so it’s a decision that was not made lightly. None of this surprises us. We have previously reported on the surveillance issues related to TikTok as well as other Chinese-owned concerns. It’s naïve to think that any software of Chinese provenance isn’t being used as a data collection scheme, and equally naïve to believe that said data isn’t being shared with the Chinese government. A year ago, Congress passed a law mandating that ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, divest its ownership else be banned in the United States. ByteDance could be rich beyond all the dreams of avarice if it chose to sell. That it hasn’t done so simply reinforces everyone’s suspicions that the service’s real owner is primarily interested in something other than profits. The bill that President Biden signed had passed the House 360-58 and the Senate 79-18. TikTok sued but the Supreme Court upheld the law in a unanimous ruling in January. It’s an astonishingly bipartisan issue in a deeply divided time. Yet in a mystifying turn of events, the current administration has twice extended the original divestment deadline (now set for June 19). “Perhaps I shouldn’t say this,” President Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker, “but I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok.” Quite the switch for someone who rightly attempted to ban the service during his first term. After the latest show of bad faith by Tik Tok revealed by Irish regulators, President Trump should now enforce this sale – after all, it is a law, not a suggestion – and protect our citizens. It is the president’s constitutional duty to carry out the laws the American people pass through the voice of their representatives. A show of seriousness about enforcing this law would probably allow TikTok to survive in some form. Moreover, it would protect tens of millions of Americans from Chinese government surveillance. Comments are closed.
|
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed