Canada’s security agency is warning citizens about the use of TikTok, claiming that user data could be accessible to the Chinese government. In an interview with CBC News which will air on Saturday, David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said that “the Chinese government has a very clear strategy to acquire personal information globally.” Vigneault explained that China is using big data analytics and powerful data centers to process this data, developing artificial intelligence based on the information collected. The possibility of the Chinese government accessing user data is at the center of US efforts to regulate (and possibly ban) the app. In April, the US Congress passed a law that will ban TikTok unless it splits from its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance.
In response, TikTok sued the US government in May, arguing that the proposed ban is unconstitutional. TikTok said staff in China do not have access to user data in the United States and Europe. The company has initiated two major restructuring projects, Project Texas and Project Clover, to separate user data from China. US user data is hosted on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure and is not supposed to be accessible outside the US, although a recent Fortune report indicates that these efforts have been largely cosmetic. Danielle Morgan, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said: “These claims are not supported by evidence. TikTok has never shared Canadian user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked.”
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