Washington (AFP)
Senators have called Thursday the US administration to study the threats that could pose the application of Chinese video sharing TikTok, acclaimed by American teenagers, fearing that it is used by Beijing to spy on them.
"With more than 110 million downloads in the US alone, TikTok poses a counter-intelligence risk that we can not ignore," two US Senate tenors said in a letter, calling on intelligence chiefs national "conduct an assessment of the risks to national security" posed by the application.
Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Tom Cotton believe TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, "who is forced to abide by Chinese laws" may be forced to "cooperate with the intelligence services of the Chinese Communist Party", even if user data is stored in the United States.
They are also concerned that the app will give Chinese intelligence secret access to users' smartphones and computers. The United States is already accusing Chinese telecom giant Huawei of this same procedure.
"It seems that TikTok is censoring content deemed too politically sensitive against the Chinese Communist Party, including in reference to the Hong Kong protests, Tiananmen Square events, Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, and the treatment of Uyghurs. Senators added, saying the platform could be a "potential target" for attacks during the 2020 election campaign.
In the 2016 election, Russian agencies created fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram to intervene in the American debate by spreading false information.
With 500 million users worldwide, the popularity of the short video sharing app has exploded in the last two years, especially among teenagers.
© 2019 AFP