CBS News
TikTok’s fate in the U.S. hangs in the balance. What would the sale of the popular app mean?
TikTok could soon be inaccessible to its more than a hundred million users in the U.S., after the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday voted to pass a law forcing the app to be sold by its Chinese parent company or face a stateside ban.
Much like other social media apps, including those owned by U.S. companies, concerns abound over the vast amount of personal user data collected by TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, something which many believe poses a national security threat.
Under the proposed legislation, ByteDance would have six months to divest TikTok or face a nationwide ban.
Would a sale solve the issue?
Not entirely. But it would mark a step in the right direction, according to cybersecurity experts.
“It would only solve the first problem, which is the accessibility of Americans’ data to Chinese authorities,” Ivan Tsarynny, a cybersecurity expert who testified before the House Committee to recommend that TikTok either be sold or banned in the U.S., told CBS MoneyWatch.
Still, a new owner of TikTok could illegally transfer users’ data to the Chinese government, according to Tsarynny.
“We’d have to make sure every person who has access to TikTok’s data on Americans is accessing it for the right reasons, and is not part of a covert operation,” he said.
Engineers, data scientists and other workers at a hypothetical American parent company with direct access to users’ data would have to be rigorously vetted “to ensure they are using the data for legitimate reasons and not stealing it and siphoning it back to China,” he said.
It’s well known that even U.S.-owned social media companies, which are only loosely regulated, pose security risks.
“Any company that collects this amount of sensitive, personal information from this many Americans is going to pose data privacy and security risks. So there are still many other avenues for bad actors and foreign governments to access this info,” said Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, a researcher of the impact of technology on geopolitics and society at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“A sale would solve the question of ownership, but wouldn’t necessarily make personal information any safer,” she added.
In the event that ByteDance sells TikTok, U.S. users could seamlessly continue to use the app. “It could be very non-intrusive, and users may not even notice that ownership of the company has changed,” Tsarynny said. “And in the mid to long-term, a sale has a very strong possibility of eliminating China as a threat.”
Is a sale likely?
A deal to sell TikTok could be impossible, according to experts.
“Any company that buys TikTok is going to have to be very well-resourced, very wealthy, and will need a strategic interest in purchasing TikTok without raising antitrust concerns around mergers and acquisitions, Chin-Rothmann said. “There’s a good chance a deal wouldn’t go through.”
President Biden has said he will sign the bill if it passes the Senate, but it remains to be seen whether a nationwide ban of the hugely popular app — if it came to that — would be possible. Previous efforts to do so have been blocked by legal challenges and concerns over free speech.
Israel said Sunday that the body of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi who went missing in the United Arab Emirates has been found after he was killed in what it described as a “heinous antisemitic terror incident.”
The statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel “will act with all means to seek justice with the criminals responsible for his death.” There was no immediate comment from the UAE.
Zvi Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a Kosher grocery store in the futuristic city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for commerce and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.
Jon Gambrell / AP
The agreement has held through more than a year of soaring regional tensions unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel. But Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, after months of fighting with the Hezbollah militant group, have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the UAE.
Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, has also been threatening to retaliate against Israel after a wave of airstrikes Israel carried out in October in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack.
The Emirati government did not respond to a request for comment.
Early Sunday, the UAE’s state-run WAM news agency acknowledged Kogan’s disappearance but pointedly did not acknowledge he held Israeli citizenship, referring to him only as being Moldovan. The Emirati Interior Ministry described Kogan as being “missing and out of contact.”
“Specialized authorities immediately began search and investigation operations upon receiving the report,” the Interior Ministry said.
Netanyahu told a regular Cabinet meeting later Sunday that he was “deeply shocked” by Kogan’s disappearance and death. He said he appreciated the cooperation of the UAE in the investigation and said that ties between the two countries would continue to be strengthened.
Israel’s largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the killing and thanked Emirati authorities for “their swift action.” He said he trusts they “will work tirelessly to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Kogan was an emissary of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood in New York City. It said he was last seen in Dubai. The UAE has a burgeoning Jewish community, with synagogues and businesses catering to kosher diners.
The Rimon Market, a Kosher grocery store that Kogan managed on Dubai’s busy Al Wasl Road, was shut down Sunday. As the wars have roiled the region, the store has been the target of online protests by supporters of the Palestinians. Mezuzahs on the front and the back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press journalist stopped by on Sunday.
Kogan’s wife, Rivky, is a U.S. citizen who lived with him in the UAE. She is the niece of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The UAE is an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula and is also home to Abu Dhabi. Local Jewish officials in the UAE declined to comment.
While the Israeli statement did not mention Iran, Iranian intelligence services have carried out past kidnappings in the UAE.
Western officials believe Iran runs intelligence operations in the UAE and keeps tabs on the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.
Iran is suspected of kidnapping and later killing British Iranian national Abbas Yazdi in Dubai in 2013, though Tehran has denied involvement. Iran also kidnapped Iranian German national Jamshid Sharmahd in 2020 from Dubai, taking him back to Tehran, where he was executed in October.
Hyundai and Kia are recalling more than 208,000 electric vehicles to fix a problem that can cause the loss of drive power, increasing the risk of a crash.
The recall covers more than 145,000 Hyundai and Genesis including some IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6 EVs along with Genesis GV60, Genesis GV70 and Genesis G80 models.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the vehicles’ transistors in a charging control unit may get damaged and stop charging the 12-volt battery, “which can result in a loss of drive power.”
In the Kia recall, nearly 63,000 EV6 vehicles from 2022 through 2024 are impacted.
Car dealers will inspect and replace the control unit and a fuse if needed, as well as update software. Owners whose vehicles were recalled earlier this year to fix the same problem will have to visit their dealer again.
Owners will be notified by letter in December and January.
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