India set an “incredibly important precedent” by banning TikTok two and a half years ago, FCC Commissioner said, as he projected a similar fate for the Chinese giant Bytedance app in the U.S. From a report: Brendan Carr, Commissioner of the FCC, warned that TikTok “operates as a sophisticated surveillance tool,” and told the Indian daily Economic Times that banning the social app is a “natural next step in our efforts to secure communication network.”
The senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission said he is worried that China could use sensitive and non-public data gleaned from TikTok to “blackmail, espionage, foreign influence campaigns and surveillance.” He said: “We need to follow India’s lead more broadly to weed out other nefarious apps as well,” he said. Carr’s remarks further illustrates a growing push among U.S. states and lawmakers that are increasingly growing cautious of TikTok, which has amassed over 100 million users in the nation.
