Chris Pierson, the founder of the cybersecurity platform Black Cloak, joined Cheddar News to discuss talks among U.S. lawmakers about banning TikTok.

Chris Pierson, the founder of the cybersecurity platform Black Cloak, joined Cheddar News to discuss talks among U.S. lawmakers about banning TikTok. "This is definitely information that could be misused, could be used for nefarious purposes," he said.

TikTok Faces Growing National Security Concerns

well joining us now to discuss is chris Pearson founder and ceo of black cloak with which is a cybersecurity and privacy protection platform chris Thanks so much for joining us this morning. Welcome to the show. Can you briefly walk us through what this proposed legislation entails? Yeah. So the antisocial CCP act as it's called is really designed to block and prohibit all transactions by social media companies that are controlled or influenced by countries of concern. Of course that means china. But it also includes other US foreign adversaries like Russia, Iran north Korea cuba potentially in Venezuela, so other countries as well. And it's not directed at Tiktok necessarily. Obviously this is what is spurring this legislation but it will equally apply to all sorts of companies that are in that same social media group. Yeah chris. And obviously you know kind of a concern here is Tiktok and its use of data, it has insisted that us user data is safely stored outside of china which it says should keep it out of reach of government officials. But why is there reason to believe otherwise? I mean look first the Tiktok information security team, this is a great team, great people um really top notch but just merely where you're storing the data saying that data is actually stored inside the U. S. Is only one part of the equation, if a company, if servers, if people if your employment is controlled by a foreign company really ax and control that data is at that parent company. They can go ahead and do what they want to they can go ahead and have data transferred, have data access by others and even put in their own individuals to go ahead and siphon out that data. There's no real proof of that actually happening that's been made public. So we have to be very, very careful about that. Those are not allegations, that is something That could happen. So really it comes down to the foreign ownership and control of Tiktok being within by dance, which is a Chinese company and Chinese companies must under China law that comes in from 2017 must hand over data that is requested by the CCP. So it is something where if they requested data, it doesn't matter where it is. They're going to have to turn it over to the CCP. Alright, chris, let's talk about exactly what type of data is being compromised. I want to mention too that we had a privacy policy update allowing Tiktok to collect biometric data from users. So what sort of data are we talking about? Why is it so potentially dangerous if that scenario that you just mentioned were to come true? Yeah. So the type of data that we're talking about is potentially of the of the, you know, real disastrous type is gonna be geolocation I. P address and the biometric information. So geolocation and I p address if you think about politicians, folks that are in the military intelligence circles, if you actually know where it is that they are. You can tell things about US US policy US secrets. You can tell where those remote locations may or might be around the world. If you're talking about high profile people, business executives, corporate executives. Once again, you can find out where they are, where they're frequenting those people around them, even potentially read into future transactions. So that geolocation and I. P address data is really, really important there. And of course, biometrics, biometric data is going to be the key to unlocking everything in the future. Whether it be airlines, whether it be transportation, whether it be uh state federal government service is really important data as we know, that's number one being made public. But the actual algorithms running behind it, the actual ownership of that information? It's all there within Tiktok. So this is definitely information that could be misused, could be used for nefarious purposes. Could be used for other nation state or intelligence activities. And now we know that the pace of technology moves much faster than the pace of government, particularly here in the US. And we have heard warnings from members of the Intelligence Committee. So, do you think our government officials are moving too slowly on this? Well, I think there are a few different things here to to break down first, is as it relates to federal government employees. State government employees, there's one population. So should you be restricting applications that are foreign owned that may be collecting data and may prove a weakness or weak point in your overall operation security? The answer is yes, not just regard to Tiktok, but yes. With regard to any of those apps that are on any government owned devices as it relates to general population in the regular population, in the United States. Once again, that becomes a little bit of a Turkey situation where the U. S. Should protect folks in terms of privacy and cybersecurity issues should be out there. Leading what we see all too often is that it takes the government legislation a little bit too much time to move on some of those higher level technology issues. This one is going to be a difficult one. Chris. Thank you so much for your time and for that insightful conversation. That's chris, Pearson, founder and Ceo of black cloak, which is a severe security and privacy protection platform.