SCHREMS II AND TIKTOK: TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
Facebook and TikTok have both experienced considerable skepticism of whether individuals can trust the companies’ privacy and data protection practices. These concerns are in part due to the potential for government agencies to access the data the companies collect and store. The European Union and the United States have both attempted to address these issues around potential government access to the companies’ data by using different legal mechanisms to prohibit the international transfer of data. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled twice now that the United States does not provide an adequate level of protection for personal data of Europeans and therefore invalidated the legal basis that Facebook has used for its transatlantic data transfers. Similarly, the United States has attempted to use national security legal authorities to prohibit TikTok from transferring U.S. citizens’ personal data to China. Both of these situations raise important questions as to how countries, companies, and individuals can evaluate whether they should trust technology that can collect personal data and transfer that data to another country. Neither the U.S approach nor China’s approach to address the issue provide a scalable framework for the trust of technology. However, the Organization of Economic Coopearation and Development has begun efforts to develop such a model.
Author: David A. Hoffman
PDF: http://ncjolt.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/05/NCJOLT-Vol.-22.4_573-616_Hoffman.pdf
Volume 22, Issue 4