Banning TikTok and other Chinese apps won’t solve a thing if China can simply buy the data it wants from private brokers.
By Dymples Leong and Teo Yi-Ling
August 21, 2020
Data Brokers: A Weak Link in National Security
Credit: Pixabay
Recent news over the potential ban of social media app TikTok by the United States has triggered concerns that foreign-owned social media apps can be potentially used for surveillance of American citizens. U.S. lawmakers have proposed divesting TikTok’s U.S. assets to American companies. Advocates of this approach believe that this would mitigate against data potentially landing in the wrong hands. Cyberpolicy scholar Samm Sacks, however, makes the case that American companies can still sell data to third-party data brokers, even after buying ownership of foreign-based apps. Those brokers could then turn around and sell the data to the Chinese government.
Read the full article at https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/data-brokers-a-weak-link-in-national-security/
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