TikTok: The Newest Social Media Trend or a Threat to National Security?
From sensational dances to personalized news, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms of today’s generation. Since its 2018 release in the United States, TikTok has soared in popularity, surpassing two billion global downloads in April 2020. [1] Owned by the Beijing-based startup ByteDance, Tiktok has sparked apprehension among world leaders and politicians that sensitive user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. In fact, India banned TikTok in June 2020 in response to growing geopolitical tensions with China. [2]
At the beginning of August, President Donald Trump issued an executive order giving TikTok until mid-September to find an American buyer or be banned in the United States. [3] This order came after Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election highlighted the risk of foreign interference and privacy leaks in domestic cyberspaces. [4] Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a complaint against data analytics company Cambridge Analytica for harvesting data from Facebook users to generate targeted political ads. Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook facilitated Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Some worry that if an app such as TikTok gains millions of downloads from Americans, it may collect users’ sensitive personal data and expose millions of Americans to cyber breaches. Mounting data security and biometric privacy cases against TikTok warrant the Trump administration’s cybersecurity concerns; however, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal shows that selling TikTok to an American company is not the solution. The issue is not isolated to whether social media conglomerates are domestic or foreign. Rather, it is that all big tech companies gather sensitive information from their users with few privacy external regulations to ensure data security.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on TikTok results from the app’s association with China. Currently, TikTok is under national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) due to lawmakers’ apprehension that TikTok conducts censorship to pander to the Chinese government. [5] In response to these measures, TikTok claimed that it stores data largely within the United States, collects less information from U.S. users than other social media companies do, and would never disclose any information or data to the Chinese government. [6] On the last point, however, TikTok’s U.S. privacy policy states otherwise: “We may disclose your information to respond to subpoenas, court orders, legal process, law enforcement requests, legal claims, or government inquiries.” [7] The policy asserts that any government authority can force TikTok to comply with such orders on the basis of legal action. Thus, although TikTok may resist the Chinese government’s request for user data, any form of information that TikTok stores—including data from minors and biometric material—can wind up in the hands of the Chinese government.
These privacy concerns have set off a wave of class-action data privacy lawsuits against TikTok. In 2019, FTC settled a lawsuit, United States of America v. Musical.ly, against TikTok’s predecessor app Musical.ly for gathering information from minors under the age of 13 without parental consent. Despite its growing appeal to younger demographics, TikTok has failed to protect minors by “retaining personal information for longer than is reasonably necessary to fulfill the purpose for which the information was collected.” [8] This breach of both data and child privacy indicates some degree of validity to the Trump administration’s concerns over TikTok’s data collection methods. In accordance with its U.S. policy, this sensitive information can be disclosed to both domestic and foreign government authorities, subsequently threatening the security of cyberspaces and individual privacy.
Beyond data privacy suits, TikTok has also faced biometric privacy litigation in cases such as Slate v. TikTok (2020). In this ongoing suit, TikTok allegedly violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by scanning users’ facial geometry without user consent and not disclosing information about its management of data storage. [9] Although Slate has yet to be resolved, it offers grounds for the Trump administration’s concerns that if foreign governments acquire information on users’ biometrics, this data may be used to surveil U.S. citizens both on and off the app. [10]
Despite its potential threat to both individual privacy and cybersecurity, TikTok is only part of the larger pattern of social media platforms breaching user trust. United States of America v. Facebook exposed Facebook, a leading American social media conglomerate, for tracking users across multiple devices, apps, and websites, as well as knowingly supplying third-party developers with unauthorized access to more than eighty-seven million users’ personal information. [11] Although Facebook claimed that sensitive data was voluntarily provided when users logged into Facebook, the privacy violation stems from Cambridge Analytica’s receipt and manipulation of such data. [12] Facebook’s failure to secure user data shows how all big technology companies, whether foreign or American, pose an immense risk to citizens’ privacy. The threat that TikTok’s data can be gathered and manipulated by the Chinese government parallels Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign’s exploitation of data from Facebook. Just as Cambridge Analytica utilized Facebook users’ data to create psychological profiles, TikTok allegedly collects users’ biometric information such as facial patterns and physical behavior. In both cases, the underlying risk is the political exploitation of the ways in which human beings interact among themselves and with their devices.
While the Trump administration has demanded that ownership of TikTok shift to an American company, the Facebook case reveals that user privacy and national security risks are not isolated to foreign tech companies. The administration did not seek to ban Facebook despite its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and TikTok only faces a greater standard of scrutiny due to its connection to China. While Facebook faced a $5 billion fine, the lack of precedent regarding privacy regulations for massive foreign-owned social media platforms enables the administration's proposed ban of TikTok. What the administration overlooks is that any data collection by major social media companies can undermine personal and national security. Thus, selling TikTok to an American-owned company would not eliminate national security risks but merely shift the risk from foreign interference to domestic vulnerability.
As technology in the digital age becomes increasingly advanced and integrated into everyday life, data collection on an unprecedented scale heightens the risk of security breaches. While the cases mounting against TikTok for its child and biometric privacy violations vindicate the Trump administration’s security concerns, one must consider whether the administration’s scrutiny should be focused solely on TikTok or on social media conglomerates as a whole. If the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit reveals that the issue lies with the latter, perhaps the better solution is to enforce data security regulations for all major social media platforms.
[1] Paige Leskin, TikTok Surpasses 2 Billion Downloads and Sets a Record for App Installs in a Single Quarter, Business Insider (2020), online at https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-app-2-billion-downloads-record-setting-q1-sensor-tower-2020-4-1029152194. (visited August 25, 2020)
[2] Manish Singh, ByteDance in Talks with India's Reliance for Investment in TikTok, TechCrunch (2020), online at https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/12/bytedance-in-talks-with-indias-reliance-for-investment-in-tiktok/?guccounter=1. (visited August 25, 2020)
[3] Exec. Order. No. 13942, 85 FR 48637 (August 6, 2020), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/11/2020-17699/addressing-the-threat-posed-by-tiktok-and-taking-additional-steps-to-address-the-national-emergency.
[4] U.S. Department of Justice. Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election Volume I of II. Robert S Mueller, III. Washington D.C.: DOJ 2019, online at https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf (visited August 25, 2020).
[5] Roumeliotis, Greg, et al. “Exclusive: U.S. Opens National Security Investigation into TikTok - Sources.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, November 4, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tiktok-cfius-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-opens-national-security-investigation-into-tiktok-sources-idUSKBN1XB4IL.
[7] “Privacy Policy.” TikTok, January 1, 2020. https://www.tiktok.com/legal/privacy-policy?lang=en.
[8] United States of America v. Musical.ly, Inc., 2:19-cv-1439 (C.D. Cal. 2019).
[9] Slate et al. v. TikTok, Inc. et al., 3:20-cv-02992-WHO (N.D. Cal. 2020).
[10] Schiffer, Zoe. “The Big Questions behind TikTok's Looming National Security Investigation.” The Verge, The Verge, November 7, 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20948613/tiktok-national-security-investigation-cfius-china-bytedance-hawley-rubio.
[11] United States of America v. Facebook, Inc., 19-cv-2184 (D.D.C. 2019).
[12] Ma, Alexandra, and Ben Gilbert. “Facebook Understood How Dangerous the Trump-Linked Data Firm Cambridge Analytica Could Be Much Earlier than It Previously Said. Here's Everything That's Happened up until Now.” Business Insider, Business Insider, August 23, 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-a-guide-to-the-trump-linked-data-firm-that-harvested-50-million-facebook-profiles-2018-3.