The main concern US politicians have raised about TikTok is that because it’s owned by China's ByteDance, the Chinese government could conceivably access any American data held by the company. The other big concern has been security risk. This deal would address both. Under the agreement, Oracle would store TikTok data for US users, ensure that data is not transferred to ByteDance, and be responsible for protecting user data from cybersecurity threats. Because this sensitive task will be performed by a US company with close ties to the government, TikTok should finally be able to put to rest the concern that its operations in the United States constitute a grave threat to American security. //

However, the agreement is almost certain to provide momentum to foreign governments who want to do exactly what the United States is doing: require companies to store data within their borders. Numerous countries have pushed these types of data localization requirements over the last decade, including Russia, India, and France. In response, the tech sector has made the case that this approach to data storage creates privacy risks, degrades performance, and imposes compliance costs that make it harder for small companies to compete.

If the US government succeeds in forcing TikTok to enter this local data-storing arrangement with Oracle, other governments will be more likely to impose comparable requirements on US companies operating within their borders. A principle that might be appealing to TikTok’s critics in the United States could seem much less desirable if it were applied to Apple, Meta, or Snap in countries like China or Russia. The war in Ukraine has highlighted why countries like Russia want to use localization to exert more control over global tech companies, and also why it’s so important that local data storage requirements remain the exception rather than the norm. //

In a written opinion halting President Trump’s ban, a federal judge found that while the government had successfully demonstrated that China posed a national security threat to the United States, its evidence linking TikTok to that threat was “less substantial.” TikTok currently has a data storage agreement with Google Cloud, and the government has not indicated why a hosting deal with Oracle provides better protection for US user data than the current agreement with Google.

How’s the old idiom go? When in Rome, do as the Romans?

The Democrat Party has been “symbolism over substance” for decades. While I’m not suggesting the Republican National Committee’s launch of a voter registration initiative at gas stations across the country amid a continuing sharp rise in gas prices comes anywhere close to a trick from the Democrat playbook, it is perfectly symbolic given the reality of untold millions of angry Americans.

What better place to launch a voter registration drive?

As reported by The Hill, a source said “the RNC will be holding several voter registration events across the country in the coming weeks.” They added that “[t]he first event took place in Arizona Saturday, where volunteers and staff registered Americans to vote from 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. local time.”

Ben Petersen, the communications director for Arizona’s RNC, told The Hill that gas stations are the best place to have conversations with Americans angry about the price at the pump.

The CDC has “revised” pediatric deaths from COVID-19 down 24 percent, after a “mistake” was discovered. This per The Daily Caller.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its data this week to reduce pediatric deaths from COVID-19 by nearly 24%.

On Tuesday, the agency was reporting on its COVID Data Tracker that 1,755 Americans under age 18 had died from the virus since the pandemic began in spring 2020. Now, it is reporting 1,341 deaths in that category.

The CDC said the number was revised March 15 due to a “coding logic error,” according to a footnote on the agency’s COVID Data Tracker. Pediatric death counts were not the only ones to be lowered — total deaths were reduced by roughly 70,000.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/18/cdc-data-kids-pediatric-covid-coronavirus-deaths/ //

How does a screw-up like that happen at a multi-billion-dollar funded, government entity? And it only gets “corrected” after the FDA rejects vaccination for small children? It’s just all a bit too convenient.

The CDC said the number was revised March 15 due to a “coding logic error,” according to a footnote on the agency’s COVID Data Tracker. Pediatric death counts were not the only ones to be lowered — total deaths were reduced by roughly 70,000.

“An adjustment was made to COVID Data Tracker’s mortality data on March 14 involving the removal of 72,277 — including 416 pediatric deaths — deaths previously reported across 26 states because CDC’s algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related,” Jasmine Reed, a spokesperson for the CDC, told the Washington Examiner. “Working with near real-time data in an emergency is critical to guide decision-making, but may also mean we often have incomplete information when data are first reported.”

According to the CDC’s weekly provisional data, only 921 children have died for reasons “involving COVID-19,” an even lower number than the official data tracker now presents. The provisional data reported by the CDC typically lags by some period of time. //

The CDC has encountered other issues with data reporting before. The agency was criticized in February after The New York Times reported that a large portion of the data being collected by the agency regarding COVID-19 was not being made available to the public. Earlier this year, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that hospitalization data for kids could also be misleading, as many of the children hospitalized with COVID-19 were there for reasons other than the virus.