US evaluating an entire range of Chinese products with access to data on Americans
The United States has said it was evaluating an entire range of Chinese apps and products that may have data on Americans and will be undertaking actions to preserve and protect them from being accessed by the Chinese government, not only TikTok or any one specific company.
The United States has said it was evaluating an entire range of Chinese apps and products that may have data on Americans and will be undertaking actions to preserve and protect them from being accessed by the Chinese government, not only TikTok or any one specific company.
“It’s something we’re looking at, yes,” President Donald Trump told a TV interviewer Tuesday, about TikTok. “It’s a big business. Look, what happened with China with this virus, what they’ve done to this country and to the entire world is disgraceful.”
Trump was responding to a question about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s remarks suggesting the US was considering a ba TikTok, the popular video-sharing app that is at the top of every hit-list here and around the world after India banned it along with others with suspected links to Chinese government.
On Wednesday, the secretary of state stated that the US was looking at an entire range of Chinese products, devices and apps, not just TikTok.
“We have been engaged in constant evaluation about ensuring we protect the privacy of American citizens and their information,” Pompeo told reporters Wednesday, and “(not) to any one business or company but rather to American national security.”
His comments from earlier in the week about “any one company” — TikTok — he said, “fall in the context of us evaluating the threat from the Chinese Communist Party”. He went on to cite ZTE, Huawei as examples of the ongoing evaluation.
“We are now evaluating each instance where we believe that US citizens’ data they have on their phones or in the system or in their health care records we want to make sure that the Chinese government does not have the way to easily access them,” he said, adding the administration will be taking actions to preserve and protect that information.
