In its bid to be more transparent and appease governments of many Western nations, TikTok is now taking a new security route which it calls “Project Clover”.
For context, the Chinese viral social media platform recently got into hot waters with the European Parliament, the European Commission, the EU Council, and even the US lawmakers all of which have banned the installation of the application on government-issued devices.
The argument is that since TikTok is a Chinese application and considering the regulations enforced by the Chines government, it could be easy to just utilize the app as a spying tool on Western citizens.
Even US former president, Donald Trump tried to ban the service entirely in the country but it resulted in TikTok selling some of its shares to American businesses in order to appease the US government.
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Even though the social app escaped the ban about two years ago, US lawmakers have made new legislation that gives the current President, Joe Biden the executive power to ban the application if he wants to.
TikTok isn’t the only application that is currently under the threat of being banned by the US government as these groups of apps are said to pose a threat to national security.
However, the new development has it that TikTok would start storing European use data in the continent starting this year while a full migration is expected to proceed through into 2024.
To ensure an efficient data transfer to Europe, the company said it would soon open a second data center in Ireland as well as Norway and these data centers will be operated by an undisclosed third-party business.
“We are a pro-compliance company. Tell us what the problems are, and then let’s work together on the solutions. That’s been our approach in the U.S., that’s been our approach everywhere,” said Theo Bertram, VP of government relations and public policy.
“Our approach is very much open to governments, regulators, and experts to give us their counsel and advice on how we can do this even more effectively.”
The company said it would reduce the transfer of data outside of the region, and reduce employee access to user data internally.
It’s worth noting that TikTok has also employed the same measure in the United States before which it nicknamed “Project Texas” in its bid to appease American lawmakers.
