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Title: Irish Privacy Watchdog Fines TikTok $600 Million For China Data
Transfers

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/05/02/20322...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A European
Union privacy watchdog fined TikTok 530 million euros ($600 million) on
Friday after a four-year investigation found that the video sharing app's
data transfers to China put users at risk of spying, in breach of strict EU
data privacy rules. Ireland's Data Protection Commission also sanctioned
TikTok for not being transparent with users about where their personal data
was being sent and ordered the company to comply with the rules within six
months. The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok's lead data privacy
regulator in the 27-nation EU because the company's European headquarters is
based in Dublin. "TikTok failed to verify, guarantee and demonstrate that the
personal data of (European) users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was
afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed
within the EU," Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement. The
Irish watchdog said its investigation found that TikTok failed to address
"potential access by Chinese authorities" to European users' personal data
under Chinese laws on anti-terrorism, counterespionage, cybersecurity and
national intelligence that were identified as "materially diverging" from EU
standards. Grahn said TikTok has "has never received a request for European
user data from the Chinese authorities, and has never provided European user
data to them." [...] The investigation, which opened in September 2021, also
found that TikTok's privacy policy at the time did not name third countries,
including China, where user data was transferred. The watchdog said the
policy, which has since been updated, failed to explain that data processing
involved "remote access to personal data stored in Singapore and the United
States by personnel based in China." TikTok faces further scrutiny from the
Irish regulator, which said that the company had provided inaccurate
information throughout the inquiry by saying that it didn't store European
user data on Chinese servers. It wasn't until April that it informed the
regulator that it discovered in February that some data had in fact been
stored on Chinese servers. TikTok disagrees with the decision and plans to
appeal. The company said the decision focuses on a "select period" ending in
May 2023, before it embarked on a data localization project called Project
Clover that involved building three data centers in Europe. "The facts are
that Project Clover has some of the most stringent data protections anywhere
in the industry, including unprecedented independent oversight by NCC Group,
a leading European cybersecurity firm," said Christine Grahn, TikTok's
European head of public policy and government relations. "The decision fails
to fully consider these considerable data security measures."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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