TikTok CEO Shou Chew testifies at congressional hearing

TikTok CEO Shou Chew testifies at congressional hearing
TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew testified before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing entitled "TikTok: How Congress can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms," as lawmakers scrutinized the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, on Capitol Hill today.
TikTok Chief Govt Shou Zi Chew testified before a House Electrical power and Commerce Committee hearing entitled “TikTok: How Congress can Safeguard American Details Privateness and Shield Little ones from Online Harms,” as lawmakers scrutinized the Chinese-owned movie-sharing application, on Capitol Hill now. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

After much more than five hours of testimony, we are mainly again where by we have been when the hearing begun. US lawmakers continue to be confident that TikTok is an urgent menace to national protection TikTok built no new major commitments over and above what it has now promised to do to safeguard user knowledge and a nationwide ban however appears to be incredibly much a are living likelihood.

Number of new information have been uncovered in the hearing, but lawmakers took each chance to accuse TikTok of actively spying on US customers of failing to reasonable written content in the way that Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sister application, does under China’s rigid world-wide-web censorship routine and of proficiently getting an arm of the Chinese governing administration.

“What you’re expressing about Challenge Texas just doesn’t pass the smell exam,” said Rep. Angie Craig, referring to the firm’s program to wall off US person data. “My constituents are worried that TikTok and the Chinese Communist Bash are managing their data and viewing our own vulnerabilities…. What you are carrying out down in Texas is all well and very good, but it is not ample to be certain that our privateness is not at chance.” 

TiKTok CEO Shou Chew sought to deliver nuanced solutions and at moments attempted to proper lawmakers on misperceptions about the enterprise and its guardian — but those responses have been often interpreted as undesirable-faith evasiveness.

It was, in other text, a textbook congressional grilling of a technologies CEO.

In a statement soon after the hearing, TikTok explained its CEO “arrived organized to answer questions from Congress, but, sadly, the working day was dominated by political grandstanding that failed to admit the true options already underway.”

If there was any development made on Thursday, it was reflected in the breadth of guidance lawmakers showed for a complete, bipartisan privacy proposal that would generate the nation’s initial-ever federal privateness right — a decades-extended aspiration of privacy advocates.

This sort of a legislation would govern all businesses’ handling of American information in the United States, covering not just TikTok but also other social media companies, facts brokers and much more. A comprehensive federal privateness law, many members of the panel stated, is the only way to assure the extended-phrase safety of Americans’ private information and facts.

FCC commissioner calls for TikTok ban

FCC commissioner calls for TikTok ban


Washington
CNN Enterprise
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The US authorities need to ban TikTok instead than appear to a countrywide protection agreement with the social media app that may well make it possible for it to continue operating in the United States, according to Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Fee.

A string of news experiences this year about TikTok’s managing of US person info has left Carr with “little confidence there’s a route forward,” he advised CNN in a cellular phone job interview Tuesday. “Perhaps the offer CFIUS ends up cutting is an incredible, airtight deal, but at this point I have a really, quite tough time searching at TikTok’s conduct contemplating we’re going to slash a specialized construct that they’re not going to come across a way around.”

The Committee on Overseas Expenditure in the United States, a multi-agency federal government overall body billed with examining small business promotions involving overseas possession, has spent months negotiating with TikTok on a proposal to resolve issues that Chinese governing administration authorities could search for to attain entry to the info TikTok retains on US citizens. This calendar year the business reported it experienced migrated its US person knowledge to servers operate by Oracle, but concerns have persisted over whether China-centered staff members of TikTok or its mother or father, ByteDance, will nevertheless be in a position to obtain that details. People bipartisan fears had been once again raised in September, when less than strain from US lawmakers, TikTok declined to commit to chopping off information flows to China.

“Commissioner Carr has no purpose in or direct expertise of the private conversations with the US govt relevant to TikTok and is not in a situation to discuss what all those negotiations entail” a TikTok spokesperson explained in a statement to CNN. “We are self-confident that we are on a route to reaching an settlement with the US authorities that will fulfill all fair national stability problems.”

Carr, who spoke to CNN from Taiwan throughout a 1st-at any time pay a visit to by an FCC official to that country, claimed he has not fulfilled with CFIUS member businesses or the White House to especially raise the concern, although he included the subject matter could have arisen by the way amid other schedule discussions.

Carr’s simply call for a TikTok ban was to start with described by Axios, and the remarks develop on his earlier phone calls for Apple and Google to get rid of TikTok from their respective application stores.

Carr acknowledged that as an FCC official, his individual ability to regulate TikTok is minimal CFIUS, the Commerce Section or the Federal Trade Commission may well have larger lawful authority above the firm, he explained.

Nevertheless, Carr said his contact for a TikTok ban displays a “natural development in my thinking” and is knowledgeable by his have agency’s operate to restrict China’s influence in US telecommunications networks. The FCC has taken numerous ways to block or ban Chinese-affiliated telecom providers from offering tools or providers in the United States, in excess of allegations that those providers could also be compelled to give up the info they hold on US communications to the Chinese government.

“For me, this is having what I’ve realized in the Huawei, ZTE, China Cell context, in which we’re wanting at possibly nefarious data flows, and bringing it to bear in phrases of this challenge,” Carr said.

TikTok couple goes viral after finding a clever way to survive I-95 traffic jam

A viral TikTok online video exhibits how a bread truck delivery driver was equipped to appear to the a great deal-necessary assistance of dozens of unsuspecting motorists who were being still left stranded on I-95 in Virginia for over 24 several hours due to snowy temperature and freezing temperatures this 7 days.

“This few had not eaten a thing for 37 hours stranded on this frozen Virginia interstate so they named the bread firm whose truck was just forward of them, inquiring if they could have what was within,” the narrator of the video clip explained, showing a photo of Casey Holihan and her spouse, John Noe, and the Schmidt Baking Company truck.

“To their surprise, the driver of the truck was contacted and was provided the go-in advance to start handing out bread to 50 hungry motorists,” they extra, as the online video displays the driver sporting boots and gloves handing out baggage of bread from the Baltimore-centered firm’s truck.

VIRGINIA’S SNOWY I-95 Website traffic JAM Invitations Connect with FOR Improved PREPAREDNESS FOR THE Unpredicted

It is unclear how several people were fed by the gesture or how extensive the drivers experienced been trapped in the visitors clog ahead of they were being rescued.

The enmeshed site visitors prompted Virginia state transportation officials to close the whole interstate, which includes the generally congested areas between exits 152 and 104.

Highway crews made use of tractors to go snow away from the entrance ramp to I-95 after it was closed right after a wintertime storm dumped a foot of snow on the location right away on January 04, 2022 near Fredericksburg in Stafford County, Virginia. (Image by Chip Somode ( Chip Somodevilla/Getty Visuals / Getty Pictures)

The incident started Monday just before pouring into Tuesday night but, in spite of the chaos, there ended up no documented fatalities, injuries, or really serious mishaps.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., shared on Twitter that he was caught on the interstate and that it took him 27 hours to travel the 110 miles involving Richmond and Washington.

Motor vehicles are caught in gridlock in the morning on the Interstate Freeway I-95 in close proximity to Stafford, Virginia, U.S., January 4, 2022 in this nonetheless impression attained from a social media online video. Susan Phalen/by means of REUTERS (Susan Phalen/via REUTERS / Reuters Photographs)

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Hundreds — if not hundreds — of motorists were being influenced ahead of their eventual help came from legislation enforcement vehicles, who have been also impeded and delayed by the storm, and the generosity of Schmidt Baking organization and its shipping truck driver.

This picture provided by the Virginia section of Transportation exhibits a closed portion of Interstate 95 around Fredericksburg, Va. Monday Jan. 3, 2022. (Virginia Department of Transportation by using AP) (Virginia Section of Transportation by means of AP / AP Newsroom)

There have been other reports of folks coming to assist of people who have been stuck, such as a spouse and children that handed oranges to the U.S. senator.

Governor Ralph Northam has declared a condition of emergency, immediately after in the beginning deciding upon not to do so, as a further wintertime storm is envisioned to hit Virginia in the coming days.