The popular video social network TikTok has acknowledged that it will allow Chinese company personnel remote access to the personal data of European users. The announcement, according to ‘Fortune’, comes a few days after a senior official from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States called for the banning of this social network in the country due to the Chinese government’s possible access to data from American users. In an entry published on the official blog of TikTok’s parent company, China’s ByteDance, on November 2, it was alluded to that the company was moving towards better data governance in Europe. However, in said publication it was tacitly admitted that the data center that was intended to be used to control the personal data of European users, and that should already be operational in Ireland, was not yet operational. For this reason, the company recognized that, for the time being, the data of users from the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway – including their personal and approximate location data – would continue to be stored in the United States and Singapore and that employees of the company could access them from ten different countries, including China. The head of privacy for the European market of TikTok, Elaine Fox, defended this policy in a statement published last Wednesday in which she said: “We rely on a force of global work to ensure our community’s experience on TikTok is consistent, enjoyable and safe.” According to Fox, staff access to European user data would be granted to certain employees from different countries, subject to a series of “robust security controls and approval protocols” recognized by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. , guidelines that were created in part to respond to European concerns that US technology companies may be forced to provide data to US intelligence agencies. Last Wednesday, the head of privacy for TikTok’s European market insisted that the social network’s efforts were going to focus on “limiting the number of employees with access to European user data; minimizing data flows outside the region; and storing European user data locally.” On the other hand, a spokesperson for the Chinese company interviewed by ‘Fortune’ has assured this medium that the storage of European data will improve in early 2023 when the center they are launching in Ireland is operational. The same spokesperson has attributed the delay in putting these facilities into operation to incidents related to the coronavirus. The same source assured that the TikToK staff that has remote access to the data of European users resides in those who already have a equivalent level of data protection approved by the EU, such as Japan. And that in countries that do not, additional measures will be taken to limit access to the minimum. “We have never provided data to the Chinese government,” he assured. TikTok ban petition in the United States Recently, the highest-ranking Republican of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, came to request the ban of TikTok. He did so by alluding to the Chinese company’s continuing lack of data privacy protection barriers and alleging a lack of confidence that user data will not find a way to the Chinese Communist Party. Concern about the use of personal data of users from Western countries that China may make has increased after Xi Jinping eliminated all internal rivals of the highest decision-making body of the PCC, the permanent committee of the politburo, made up of seven members, during the party’s quinquennial regular meeting last month. A move that has paved the way for an unprecedented third term as the country’s president and made him China’s most powerful dictator since Mao Zedong. TikTok is currently in negotiations with the CFIUS, an interagency committee that conducts security reviews. national agreements of foreign companies, to determine how it can continue to operate in the United States.