TikTok, the short-form video app, has a Huawei problem: Chinese ownership. And that in a world torn by America-China rivalry is enough for TikTok to be considered a security threat in Washington.
United States President Joe Biden, who believes that Beijing has access to all its technology companies' data, wants ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell off the app or face a ban, not unlike a similar threat faced by Huawei, the popular mobile phone company, during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Already, the US government has banned its employees from downloading the app on its official devices. The next step by the Biden administration would be to ban its use countrywide. An estimate by The Verge, a tech news portal, puts the number of TikTok users in the country at 150 million.
At press time, the TikTok ban is a "may be", but a strong "may be". Our reason for saying this is because the US is but one of a growing list of countries that have banned the video app on government-issued devices citing security and privacy concerns. The European Union is somewhere there. A case of Washington sneezing and Brussels catching a cold?
Where is the East in all this tortuous TikTok tale? Putrajaya may have had a flu shot. As usual, when it involves China, Asian countries take a softly, softly approach. Maybe it is because of Beijing's heft. Maybe they just don't have enough evidence. This is likely to be the case.
Even in the case of the US, there isn't sufficient evidence to nail TikTok. All Washington has is a supposition that TikTok is sharing data the app collects with Beijing. And this, too, is based on its belief that the Chinese government can have access to the data if it so desires. Washington and Brussels are right to be concerned about privacy and national security.
Every nation must be similarly concerned, especially given the errant behaviours of ByteDance and TikTok staff in the past. In December last year, the US business magazine Forbes was quoted by Euronews.next, a news portal, as saying that several of its journalists' devices were hacked to obtain personal data and IP addresses when they were covering a ByteDance event.
Six months earlier, BuzzFeed revealed a similar unauthorised access to journalists' data. Both ByteDance and TikTok have admitted the transgressions of its employees, who have since been sacked. Two transgressions do not make a Beijing policy, but in a world of cyberhackers, a mere supposition is seen to be enough for a ban.
But there is an irony in all this. Not long ago, Edward Snowden, a former US National Security contractor-turned-whistleblower, said the same thing about US tech giants that Washington accuses TikTok of: sharing data with governments.
The strange thing is the US government, forced to admit by Snowden's expose, now says Big Tech's sharing of data with the government is critical to avoid another Sept 11. To Washington and Brussels, US Big Tech stealing data is fine but not China's.
To us, the ordinary mortals around the globe, neither is fine if theft is what is happening.
We are with Snowden: there is a need for a redesign of the Internet's fundamentals. Be it Washington, Brussels or Putrajaya, it must protect people not trap them.