Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google's chief executives have been urged by the chief of the US telecoms regulator to kick Chinese-owned TikTok Global out of their app stores.
"I’m deeply concerned about this," Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner, reportedly said on a TV show, 'On Balance with Leland Vittert'. "The Biden administration has been undergoing a national security review of TikTok, but frankly, thats been proceeding too slowly."
Carr posted a similar message on Twitter, saying, "TikTok is more than just an app. That’s the sheep’s clothing. It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing."
Instead of waiting for Congress, Carr wrote directly to the chief executives of Apple and Google, which is part of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), telling the tech giants that TikTok had misrepresented who had access to users' data, including engineers in Beijing, and as such it was not in line with the representations TikTok made in order to get into the app store.
"So while that security review continues, Apple and Google should step up right now and boot them from the app store for their representation on how data is accessed," Carr said.
Carr requested the companies either remove TikTok from their app stores by July 8 or explain why they had no plans to do so.
Carr's request is unusual since the FCC has no clear authority over the content of app stores, as it regulates the national security space by granting certain communications licenses to companies.
TikTok has made no secret of that the fact that its engineers in locations outside of the US, including China, can gain access to US user data "as needed" and under "strict controls".
Carr is not the only one to raise an alarm, with six Republican senators, including Tom Cotton from Arkansas, Ben Sasse from Nebraska, Mike Braun and Todd Young from Indiana, Marco Rubio from Florida, and Roger Wicker from Mississippi, wrote to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen in June asking what steps the Biden administration is taking to combat the national security risks associated with TikTok.
US regulators have been scrutinising TikTok for collecting personal data from US residents.
Due to concerns that US user data could be handed over to China's communist government, the US Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews deals by foreign purchasers for national security risks, ordered parent ByteDance to divest TikTok in 2020.
In response to these concerns, TikTok announced earlier this month that it migrated all US user information to Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) servers.