On April 24, US President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The law, which was overwhelmingly approved by the US Congress, requires the popular video-sharing app TikTok to divest from its parent company, China-based ByteDance, or face a ban in the US. The legislation highlights a dilemma faced by democratic countries, including Taiwan, that pits free speech against national security interests.
The US ultimatum is meant to address national security concerns that, according to China’s National Security Law and National Intelligence Law, obligates Chinese individuals and organizations to support national intelligence work, allowing the Chinese government access to more than 170 million US users’ data or the ability to spread propaganda.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has confirmed that TikTok’s parent company is “beholden to the Chinese government,” and some TikTok employees have revealed that its Chinese executives, instead of TikTok international leadership, are making key decisions, despite its claims of independence.
In 2020, then-US president Donald Trump issued an executive order to force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the app, but Beijing responded by slapping curbs on data-analysis related technology exports, aiming to block a full sale of TikToK by requiring ByteDance to undergo a Chinese government-reviewed licensing procedure.
This time, as expected, ByteDance filed a legal challenge to the new US law, saying that it contravenes the country’s first amendment, setting up what likely will be a prolonged court battle centering on the conflict between national security and freedom of speech.
The ByteDance app’s threat to democratic nations’ security not only concerns the US: India in 2020 banned TikTok and a slew of Chinese apps, followed by Iran, Nepal and Somalia. Canada, the UK, Australia and the European Parliament have restricted the use of TikTok in government agencies.
In Taiwan, which has been listed as the country most targeted by disinformation and cyberattacks originating from China for 11 consecutive years in a report by the global research project Varieties of Democracy, government employees have been prohibited from using Chinese social media platforms, such as TikTok and its domestic Chinese version, Douyin (抖音), since 2019.
Although TikTok and Douyin have been officially classified as “dangerous products” controlled by foreign adversaries that could pose a threat to national security, the Executive Yuan has been at its wits’ end in trying to restrict their public use due to a lack of solid legal basis. A ban on those apps surely would also be decried by opposition parties.
While there are an estimated 5 million TikTok users in Taiwan, with 57 percent under the age of 40, a growing number of civil groups and cybersecurity experts are urging a restriction on its usage.
Some lawmakers recently proposed a legislative amendment to empower the authorities to ask digital stores and platforms to issue warnings about or remove harmful apps that pose possible information security risks. The government should put more effort into collecting facts showing the detrimental effect of Chinese apps on democracy, with a view to accelerating legislation and promoting public vigilance regarding manipulated messages from China-controlled media.
Chinese apps could be tools to collect users’ and their associates’ personal data, which would be used to trap those while traveling to China. Several Taiwanese scholars have been detained and questioned in China. These applications manipulated by China in fact have turned out to be a stranglehold on the freedom of speech.
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