DIGITAL LIFE

Amazon bars video app TikTok on workers' phones

Amazon has told employees to delete the popular video app TikTok from phones on which they use Amazon email, citing security risks from the China-owned app, a new CEO, t op Disney executive Kevin Mayer, which experts said could help it navigate U.S. regulators. And it is stopping operations in of Hong Kong because of a new Chinese national security law that led Facebook, Google and Twitter to also stop providing user data to Hong Kong authorities.
But a top Trump administration official said this week that the government remains concerned about the national-security threat to the app's millions of U.S. users. When Fox News TV host Laura Ingraham suggested that the U.S. ban Chinese social media apps, "especially TikTok," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that "We're certainly looking at it."
Pompeo said the Trump administration has "worked on this very issue for a long time," including its stance against Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE. The government has tried to convince allies to root Huawei out of telecom networks, saying the company is a national-security threat, with mixed success; Trump has also said he was willing to use Huawei as a bargaining chip in trade talks. Huawei has denied that it enables spying for the Chinese government.
"With respect to Chinese apps on people's cell phones, I can assure you the United States will get this one right too," Pompeo said, and added that if users downloaded the app their private information would be "in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party."
A U.S. national-security agency has been reviewing ByteDance's purchase of TikTok's precursor, Musical.ly, while U.S. military branches banned the app from government-issued phones. Meanwhile, privacy groups say TikTok has been violating children's privacy, even after the Federal Trade Commission fined the company in 2019 for collecting personal information from children without their parents' consent.
TikTok, like YouTube, relies on its users for the videos that populate its app. They are under a minute long, and many feature dancing and lip-syncing. TikTok has a reputation as a fun, goofy video destination, but it has racked up concerns ranging from censorship of videos, including those critical of the Chinese government, the threat of sharing user data with Chinese officials and violating kids' privacy.
Amazon is likely concerned about a Chinese-owned app's access to employee data, said Susan Ariel Aaronson, a professor at George Washington University and a data governance and national-security expert. China, according to the U.S. government, banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, because of tensions between the countries. India cited privacy concerns that threatened India's sovereignty and security for the ban. India is one of TikTok's largest markets and had previously briefly banned the app in 2019 because of worries about children and sexual content.
Amazon's move on TikTok may foretell actions by other companies. "If we are concerned about TikTok, we should be concerned about thousands of other apps that collect, sell, and give access to our location data, contacts, and photos on our phones," said Kirsten Martin, a professor of technology ethics at the University of Notre Dame. "I would also expect other companies to take a closer look as to what apps are allowed on their employees' phones."

by Tali Arbel