The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, for its acronym in English), Christopher Wray, said Tuesday that the office has “national security concerns” about TikTok, the popular short-form video hosting application, since the Chinese-owned company is currently seeking US government approval to continue operating in the country.
During a US House Homeland Security Committee hearing on “global threats to the country,” Wray said that FBI concerns on TikTok include “the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control the collection of data from millions of users.”
There are also concerns, Wray said in response to a question, that the Chinese government could “control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used to influence operations or to control software on millions of devices, giving an opportunity for potentially and technically compromise personal devices”.
In written testimony, Wray called the foreign intelligence and economic threat from China “the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ideas, innovation and economic security.”
However, he declined to answer a lawmaker’s question in open session about whether the Chinese government has been leveraging TikTok to collect data on US citizens.
[Con información del periodista de VOA, Massod Farivar]
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