WASHINGTON (Michigan News Source) – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr called upon the Council of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) to ban the social media app TikTok in the U.S. 

Carr’s words echo an earlier attempt to ban the app in 2020 when then President Donald Trump and his administration tried to ban it, but were unsuccessful as the executive order was overturned by the courts.   

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A recent report shows TikTok has more than 200 million downloads in the U.S. alone, and as a result, the informational platform’s Chinese parent company owner, ByteDance, is coming under greater scrutiny.  At the moment the FCC has no authority to directly regulate TikTok. 

CFIUS and TikTok owners are currently negotiating to determine whether the U.S. can take the reins and control the app separate from the Chinese parent company in the states. But Carr thinks this is not a viable option. 

“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” Carr said, citing recent revelations about how TikTok and ByteDance handle U.S. user data.

According to Carr there simply is not “a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party].” 

During a July address to the subcommittee on National Security of the United States House of Representatives Committee on oversight and reform, he made some serious claims about the security risk of the app to service members and everyday Americans. 

“For one, TikTok officials have engaged in a pattern of misrepresentations regarding both the amount and type of sensitive data it collects as well as the extent to which that data has been accessed from inside China,” Carr said, “For another, the flow of this non-public, sensitive data into China is particularly troubling given the PRC’s track record of engaging in business and industrial espionage as well as blackmail and other nefarious actions.” 

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He later cited TikTok’s own Privacy Policy which required users to consent to TikTok collecting “their search and browsing histories to keystroke patterns and biometric identifiers, including faceprints— which researchers have said might be used in unrelated facial recognition technology—and voiceprints.” 

The growing concern over the safety of personal information collected from the app, and ByteDance’s interest in deliberately pushing certain agendas on the app has caught attention from both sides of the political aisle. 

During a recent trip to Australia, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman and Democratic Senator Mark Warner told a paper that he had concerns about TikTok.  

“This is not something you would normally hear me say, but Donald Trump was right on TikTok years ago,” Warner told The Sydney Morning Herald, “If your country uses Huawei, if your kids are on TikTok … the ability for China to have undue influence is a much greater challenge and a much more immediate threat than any kind of actual, armed conflict.”

Users of the app can enjoy a highly curated “For You” page in part because of the company’s algorithm that tracks eye movement and time watching videos.