TikTok for Tat – Harris Bricken Sliwoski LLP

TikTok has been within the information lots these days, particularly since its CEO Shou Zi Chew’s contentious testimony earlier than the U.S. Home Committee on Vitality & Commerce. People are responding by asking completely different questions. Some, presumably together with most of those that take pleasure in, and even perhaps create, TikTok content material, ask, “Why are we whipping ourselves right into a hysteria to scapegoat TikTok?” Others, many pushed by considerations over doable entry to TikTok information by the Chinese language authorities, but in addition nervous concerning the potential negative results of TikTok use, query, “Why can’t we simply ban TikTok?”And a number of them, particularly these on the older facet, surprise, “What Is TikTok?”

When discussing current or doable TikTok bans, we should distinguish between employer-specific prohibitions affecting solely the units issued by the employer in query and a wider ban that might forestall anybody from utilizing the TikTap app within the nation. The primary kind of restriction appears completely affordable, and actually many such limits are already in place, each in the private and non-private sectors, each in america and in lots of different international locations around the globe. And such restrictions are affordable not simply on information safety grounds. Employer-issued telephones and units are, usually talking, work instruments, and there are few people who must entry TikTok for work functions. If Georgia and Wisconsin state workers who’ve work telephones actually need to know what Oriana Colutta has in her bag, they need to get their very own cellphone (or ask their youngsters to indicate them).

Stopping common residents from utilizing TikTok is one other matter altogether. People ought to be involved concerning the entry completely different events must their private data, nevertheless it doesn’t observe that the federal government must, or ought to, defend them in opposition to their very own carelessness. A blanket ban by the federal authorities on TikTok would have critical implications for civil liberties and set up a harmful precedent. It’s in opposition to the risks of emboldening censorious authorities actors that the dangers posed by TikTok should be weighted.

Simply how a lot of a menace TikTok presents is an open query, which we gained’t delve into right here. However let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that the Chinese language authorities do have, or may receive, entry to data collected by TikTok on its American customers. The chance of that taking place ought to definitely give everybody some pause, however then once more the type of data on People held by TikTok data is already, and possibly extra readily, obtainable to Chinese language authorities from different sources.

Take People who fly on Chinese language carriers, both to China or to a different nation altering planes in China. These carriers receive People’ passport and bank card particulars earlier than issuing a ticket. Does anybody suppose that, say, Air China wouldn’t, if ordered to by the CCP, hand over that data to a Chinese language safety company? The identical goes for People who place orders from Chinese language producers through Alibaba or who purchase instantly from Chinese language sites. Certainly, it’s fairly seemingly the CCP already has prepared entry to this data with out having to order anybody to offer it to them, and even ask.

One may argue that the examples above contain People who willingly selected to interact with Chinese language entities, corresponding to Air China. But by now most People who learn about TikTok additionally learn about its ties to China. It’s laborious to argue that the voluntary use of TikTok is any completely different from shopping for an Air China ticket, inserting an order for footwear from a manufacturing facility in Fujian, or shopping for from a Chinese language-owned web site. Nobody forces the People in query to interact in any of those interactions, together with TikTok use.

The true subject with TikTok is the dearth of reciprocity that enables it to be freely utilized in america, whereas among the hottest American social media apps and web sites should not legally or freely accessible in China. Reciprocity ought to be one of many bedrocks of worldwide relations, however it’s typically lacking from the equation on the subject of China, largely as a result of China (for apparent causes) fully ignores this subject. What occurs with TikTok is however one in every of many examples. Plainly the true query People ought to be asking is, if Google, Fb and the New York Occasions can’t be freely accessed in China, why ought to TikTok be obtainable in america? Appears unfair. Convince us otherwise.