Oracle's TikTok deal fails to resolve US security concerns [u]

Oracle's bid for the U.S. operations of social media platform TikTok does not fully resolve White House national security concerns, according to a new report.

On Sunday, it was reported that Microsoft's bid to acquire TikTok's U.S. arm had failed and that Oracle had closed a deal with developer ByteDance. The Chinese parent company has until Sept. 20 to ink a deal to avoid a ban on TikTok in the U.S.

President Donald Trump has the authority to sign off on the acquisition, but Bloomberg reports that the Oracle and TikTok deal falls short of resolving national security concerns about Chinese espionage. Currently, the agreement is still being negotiated between administration officials and the two companies. Addressing those security concerns, which could include barring ByteDance's access to U.S. data, could be the key to government approval.

The structure of the deal is still unclear. Earlier in September, ByteDance was said to be in talks with the U.S. government to avoid a full sale of TikTok's operations in the country. Under terms of the deal, Oracle would be granted full access to TikTok's source code to ensure no back doors exist to siphon personal information from the service's 100 million active American users, sources said.

Similarly, the talks are taking place against the backdrop of Chinese government restrictions on technology exports. On Friday, Beijing signaled that it would prefer to see TikTok shut down in the U.S. than sold to a domestic company.

Updated with details about source code access.

26 Comments

anantksundaram 18 Years · 20391 comments

About 4 years ago

Seemed like a sham arrangement, anyway. Too clever by half.

So glad the US administration is taking a tough stance.

DAalseth 6 Years · 3067 comments

Of course the White House isn't Happy. This whole thing is a political sham. BS to try and win votes by being hard on the Chinese. They want to nurse it out as long as they can get the press to pay attention.

chasm 10 Years · 3624 comments

I concur with DAalseth. This entire thing was a manufactured “crisis” with no provided evidence of malfeasance by Bytedance at any point. I am definitely not a fan of TikTok and would have been ready to believe any credible evidence of any nefarious behaviour, but none at all has been put forth ... the president started this because TikTok users embarrassed him, plain and simple, and he is indeed using his retribution as a campaign prop, and further not considering the damage the soured relationship with China will cause other American tech firms.

Even if I’m gullible enough to dislike Bytedance for the sole reason that they are a foreign company ... um, are Americans ready to give up Samsung, Acer, Asus, Honda, Hyundai, Sharp, Toyota, Hisense, TCL, and literally hundreds of popular but foreign-owned brands from nearly every aspect of your lives?

then to force a deal that JUST HAPPENS to favour a big-dollar contributor to the president ... what an AMAZING coincidence!

Give me a break!

FileMakerFeller 6 Years · 1561 comments

We know he has more important things to attend to. Evidence so far leads to the question of whether or not he actually will attend to those things rather than continuing to be petty and vindictive.

redgeminipa 13 Years · 555 comments

cat52 said:

DAalseth said:

Of course the White House isn't Happy. This whole thing is a political sham. BS to try and win votes by being hard on the Chinese. They want to nurse it out as long as they can get the press to pay attention.

With everything else going on in 2020, do you really think Trump being hard on TikTok is going to influence the average Joe to vote one way or the other?

Since all of us here are ardent technophiles, we tend to magnify such things out of all proportion to how average folk see them, that is, assuming they see them at all.

So the whole schtick that Trump is going hard on TikTok for purely political reasons is a pretty ridiculous claim to make...But at least you didn't mention the canard that Trump is going after TikTok due to TikTok supposedly embarrassing him at the Tulsa rally. I mean, I think the dude has more important things to attend to, for instance the various Mideast peace deals recently announced etc etc.

LOL! Peace deals with countries who the US has been peaceful with already? LOL, talk about a sham! Trump was embarrassed, period. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing he prefers to put his effort into, instead of, you know... a global pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of American lives at stake.