HIGHLIGHTS
TikTok claimed to have finished transferring data regarding its US users.
TikTok aims to allay US worries over data integrity
A request for comment from TikTok was not immediately answered.
Six Republican senators questioned US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday on a Biden administration study of TikTok's national security posture.
Due to concerns that US user data might be transferred to China's communist government, the US government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which evaluates deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks, ordered Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok in 2020.
In an effort to allay US worries about data integrity, TikTok said last week that it had finished transferring information on its US customers to servers at Oracle.
The administration "appears to have done nothing to implement" the August 2020 divestment order, according to inquiries from Senators Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse, Mike Braun, Marco Rubio, Todd Young, and Roger Wicker. The results of the security evaluations, they added, "have also not been made publicly available after one year."
Will TikTok be locally managed in the United States, are the senators' questions. and "Will the US government be able to routinely access and examine the source code of the algorithm?" What guarantees does the US government have that TikTok will retain US data and adopt privacy measures with sufficient safeguards? is another question raised.
A request for comment from TikTok was not immediately fulfilled.
Former President Donald Trump lost a number of legal challenges in his attempts to prevent new users from installing WeChat and TikTok and to forbid other transactions that would have essentially prevented the usage of the apps in the United States.
In June 2021, President Joe Biden revoked several executive orders issued by President Trump that aimed to outlaw new downloads of the applications and directed the Commerce Department to investigate any security risks posed by the apps.
According to the senators, TikTok's plan to keep user data without granting ByteDance access "would do little to solve the underlying security issues."
According to insiders, CFIUS and TikTok have had in-depth conversations about security vulnerabilities. A Yellen spokesperson declined to comment on Friday.
With more than 1 billion active users worldwide and the US as its main market, TikTok is one of the most widely used social media applications.
