The head of Canada’s intelligence agency says the Chinese government has access to TikTok user data

The Canadian Security Agency is trying to discourage Canadians from using TikTok, telling users that their data is “available to the government of China.”

In an interview with CBC News scheduled to air on Saturday, David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said that “there is a very clear strategy on the part of the government of China…to be able to obtain…personal information.” from all over the world” CBC Reports.

“They use big data analytics, they have amazing computer farms that process data, and they develop artificial intelligence… based on the use of this data,” Vigneault added.

The Chinese government’s ability to access user data is at the forefront of US efforts to regulate — and perhaps even ban — the app. Congress passed a bill that would ban TikTok unless it divests from its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, in April. TikTok sued the US government over the law in May, arguing that the impending ban was unconstitutional.

TikTok previously claimed that employees in China were unable to access US and European users’ data. The company has undertaken two massive corporate restructuring efforts — Project Texas and Project Clover, a reference to American and European endeavors, respectively — to isolate user data from China. US user data is hosted in Oracle’s cloud infrastructure and is not supposed to be accessed by anyone outside the US, despite a recent report by luck He notes that efforts to secure US user data have been “largely cosmetic.”

“These assertions are not supported by evidence, and the reality is that TikTok has never shared Canadian user data with the Chinese government, and would not do so if we asked,” TikTok spokeswoman Danielle Morgan said. the edge.