What's happening? A member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, is renewing calls for Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, citing national security concerns surrounding the platform's China based parent company, ByteDance. [embed]https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776?s=20&t=GVBOXuhUOKV7GuCav6nP9Q[/embed] Carr, a Republican, in a letter to the companies' CEOs, dated June 24 and sent on FCC letterhead, described ByteDance as "beholden" to the Chinese government and "required by law to comply with [Chinese] government surveillance demands." Citing a new BuzzFeed News report which alleges that ByteDance's Chinese staff had accessed American TikTok users' data on multiple occasions, Carr said the allegations showed how TikTok is "out of compliance with the policies that both of your companies require every app to adhere to." He has asked the companies to either remove TikTok from their app stores by July 8 or explain to him why they did not plan to do so. What have the companies said? Multiple publications and agencies have reached out to Apple and Google but have been denied comments till now. A TikTok spokeswoman said in an email to NBC News that the company’s engineers in locations outside of the United States, including China, can be granted access to US user data "on an as-needed basis" and under "strict controls". Why does it matter? Carr’s request is unusual given that the FCC does not have clear jurisdiction over the content of app stores. The FCC regulates the national security space usually through its authority to grant certain communications licenses to…
