Notes

TikTok Transfers U.S. TikTok Moves U.S.

By Echo Wang, David Shepardson



NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) - TikTok announced it had completed migrating information on its U.S. users to servers at Oracle Corp, in a move that could resolve U.S. regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular short video app.



The move, which was first reported by Reuters, comes nearly two years after an U.S. national security panel ordered parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok because of fears that U.S. user data could be passed on to China's communist government.



TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps, with more than 1 billion active users globally and counting the U.S. as its largest market.



App developers are being monitored more closely by the United States for personal data they manage, especially if it involves U.S. intelligence personnel or military personnel.



Following the election of Donald Trump, Joe Biden became the U.S. president. The order to sell TikTok was not executed.



The panel, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) However, it continues to raise concerns about security of data at TikTok which ByteDance is now hoping to address, Reuters previously reported.



The White House had no immediate comment while the U.S. Treasury declined to make a statement.



Reuters reported in March that TikTok was close to a deal with Oracle Corp to store the U.S. users' data.



Oracle has been in talks to acquire the majority stake in TikTok in 2020, as ByteDance was under U.S. pressure to sell the app. The cloud computing company now has TikTok's U.S. user data on Oracle servers in the United States under the new partnership, TikTok said.



Oracle declined to comment.



DATA SECURITY TEAMS



TikTok previously stored U.S. user data in its data centers in Virginia and a backup in Singapore. It said it would remove U.S. user data from its own data centers and fully rely on Oracle's U.S. server.



The Virginia and Singapore centers are still being used to back up the data, the company said.



TikTok has also established a dedicated U.S. data security team known as "USDS" as an intermediary for U.S. user information and ringfencing it from ByteDance, a company spokesperson said to Reuters.



Directed by Andrew Bonillo, who was an executive in TikTok's global security department, the USDS currently is a subordinate of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, according to the spokesperson.



According to Reuters an insider told that the company is currently discussing a structure where the team will operate on its own and not under the direction of TikTok.



Another executive in the senior ranks at USDS is Will Farrell, who was previously under TikTok's Chief Security Officer Roland Cloutier. The USDS team is comprised of the content moderation team, engineers as well as employees of product and user operations.



ByteDance is one of China's fastest growing startups. It is the nation's top news aggregator, Jinri Toutiao, as the TikTok's Chinese counterpart Douyin.



In June 2021, Biden withdrew Trump-era executive orders that sought to block new downloads of WeChat and TikTok. The Commerce Department is writing new guidelines on the security of app data that could potentially lead to restrictions on how apps that are based abroad make use of U.S. user data or even ban apps deemed to pose security risks that are serious.



Gina Raimondo, Commerce Secretary said last year that the administration is "very serious" regarding protecting Americans with their personal data. However, she criticised Trump's strategy.



"Doing some executive order that is meaningless on TikTok isn't the method to go about it," she said. Because We All Love Games (Reporting by Echo Wang in New York, David Shepardson in Washington and editing by Deepa Babington)


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