Jitterbug Security Protocols Could Still Leak U.S. User Data to Chinese Communist Government

On October 19th, the U.S. Department of Justice said it was reviewing a security agreement on Shake, which makes the TikTok app available to U.S. users.

Since the beginning of 2019, TikTok has been under strict regulation by the U.S. government for collecting user data in the U.S. and using it for malicious purposes. A previous report stating that engineers in the communist China had access to the private data of U.S. TikTok users sparked a great deal of discontent.

U.S. security lawyers point out that TikTok’s entire system is built in the Communist China, and if there is a problem with the system, it can only be handled by engineers who are in the Communist China.
TikTok reportedly hosts its U.S. user database at Oracle, which has been reviewing its algorithms. The attorney argued that additional restrictions on how U.S. user data is stored and accessed are essential, noting that no safeguards agreement, no matter how tight, will solve the U.S. security problem.

The popularity of the TikTok app has made it much tougher to technically isolate data or ban it outright today than it was five or six years ago. Earlier the Biden administration had weighed in on many fronts but still no agreement was reached.