FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called Tuesday for the US government to formally ban the popular video sharing app TikTok over national security risks posed by its ties to China.
Carr, a frequent TikTok critic and the Federal Communications Commission’s senior Republican member, argued any other resolution would not adequately address concerns that Beijing could improperly access the data of millions of US-based TikTok users.
“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” Carr told Axios in what was described as his strongest rebuke of TikTok to date.
Carr added there wasn’t “a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party].”
Carr and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have expressed mounting concern that TikTok’s parent company, China-based ByteDance, is sharing US user data with Beijing officials. Critics say the Chinese Communist Party could attempt to influence US politics and social discourse through the app.
While the FCC does not have regulatory power over TikTok, the Republican commissioner said the Council on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), an interagency committee that reviews foreign investment in the country, should seek to implement a ban.
TikTok is in negotiations with CFIUS on a potential divestment from ByteDance that would allow the app to remain operational in the US despite the user privacy concerns.
TikTok has long denied that China-based ByteDance employees have access to US user data, despite reporting to the contrary that surfaced in recent months.
“Commissioner Carr has no role in the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to TikTok and appears to be expressing views independent of his role as an FCC commissioner,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
“We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the US Government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns,” the spokesperson added.
In June, Carr penned letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai which urged both executives to ban TikTok from their respective app stores.
“At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data,” Carr wrote. “Indeed, TikTok collects everything from search and browsing histories to keystroke patterns and biometric identifiers, including faceprints … and voiceprints.”
“It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data,” Carr added.
Carr’s letter referenced a bombshell June report by BuzzFeed News, which cited leaked audio recordings from dozens of meetings that suggested Beijing-based ByteDance’s access to US data was more extensive than previously known.
The report included details on a September 2021 meeting where a TikTok director referred to a ByteDance engineer in China as a “master admin” who “has access to everything.”
In a separate meeting, a worker in TikTok’s Trust and Safety department purportedly said that “everything is seen in China.”
TikTok officials are adamant that sufficient protections are in place for US users. Hours before BuzzFeed’s report surfaced, the company noted that it had migrated US user data to servers maintained by Oracle.
In July, Gizmodo reported on internal documents that revealed TikTok had actively instructed its public relations employees to “downplay the China association.”
A separate BuzzFeed report said ByteDance had used another app, the now-defunct TopBuzz, to push favorable coverage of the Chinese government while blocking negative coverage. ByteDance said the report was “false and ridiculous.”
Former President Donald Trump pursued an outright ban on TikTok over national security concerns, but a federal judge blocked the move in 2020.
Meanwhile, President Biden revoked the previous administration’s attempted bans on TikTok and WeChat while ordering a security review of potentially dangerous apps.
Last month, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said Trump was right to pursue the ban.
“This is not something you would normally hear me say, but Donald Trump was right on TikTok years ago,” Warner told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“If your country uses Huawei, if your kids are on TikTok … the ability for China to have undue influence is a much greater challenge and a much more immediate threat than any kind of actual, armed conflict,” Warner added.