TikTok makes fresh push to convince EU it won’t give data to China
- The company plans to build 3 European facilities to store information on its 150 million users in the region, keeping it out of Beijing’s hands
- In recent weeks, the European Commission, European Parliament and other institutions have instructed staff to delete the app off their work phones
ByteDance-owned TikTok wants to convince European governments that it is an industry leader in data protection, rather than a Chinese-owned app that warrants the wave of bans across the continent.
The company outlined plans on Wednesday to build three European data centres to store information on TikTok’s 150 million users in the region locally with the help of an independent third company that will oversee data access controls. Once operational, the data centres will cost the company €1.2 billion (US$1.3 billion) annually.
Similar to the company’s Project Texas in the US, TikTok’s Project Clover is meant to assure concerned governments that Beijing cannot access Europeans’ data either through the front door, via official legal requests, or back door.
It follows the White House endorsement on Tuesday of a bipartisan bill that could give the president authority to ban or force a sale of TikTok.
“The Chinese government has never asked us for data and if they would, we would refuse to do so,” Theo Bertram, TikTok’s European policy chief, told reporters.
He said that the company’s approach to data storage would make it impossible for the Chinese government to compel TikTok to hand over European data and that the data access controls and audit would minimise the risk of back-door access to the data.