The Chinese social media app TikTok announced today that it’s introducing a new data security plan to address Europe’s fears that the app might be spying for the Chinese Communist Party.

The move comes just as the White House backed a new Senate bill that might spell the end of the app in the U.S. For a long time now, the U.S. has accused TikTok of being a threat to national security. The app has experienced similar accusations across Europe, despite any nation as yet producing a smoking gun. Right now, TikTok users in Europe number about 150 million, while in the U.S., the number is close to 100 million.

TikTok has scrambled to put things right in the U.S., but with the introduction of this latest bill, its existence in the country is tenuous. Whether the plan for Europe changes that remains to be seen. Just recently, the European Commission mirrored U.S. policy when it banned TikTok on all governmental staff devices.

That’s why the company today unveiled “Project Clover,” a strategy it says will create a “secure enclave for European TikTok user data,” at a cost of about $1.3 billion. The company will now store its data on servers in Ireland and Norway.

“Building on our data security approach in the US, we are further enhancing these controls by introducing security gateways that will determine employee access to European TikTok user data and data transfers outside of Europe,” TikTok said in a press release. “This will add another level of control over data access. Any data access will not only comply with the relevant data protection laws but also have to first go through these security gateways and additional checks.”

A third-party European cybersecurity company will oversee any exchange of data. It will monitor and audit data flows and be responsible for reporting any incidents that might happen. The identity of the third party has not yet been announced.

TikTok has always denied that the Chinese Communist Party has any access to its data. Project Clover might allay the fears European nations have about this. But over in the U.S., there’s also the concern that TikTok, being Chinese, might promote Chinese government ideology as the two countries wrestle in a trade war and the U.S. contends with China’s ever-increasing power.

Project Clover, which TikTok says has been in the pipeline for about a year, sounds very similar to Project Texas. The latter will mean all American data is stored on servers in Texas, and the firm doing the oversight will be Oracle Corp. TikTok will have to convince the U.S. that this $1.5 billion project is worth taking on.

Photo: Alexander Shatov/Unsplash