TikTok, the viral video-sharing app owned by China’s ByteDance, has said that certain employees outside the US can access the information of US users, fueling criticism from lawmakers who have raised eyebrows about the data-sharing practices of TikTok. the social network.
The company’s admission came in a letter to nine US senators who accused TikTok and its parent company of monitoring US citizens and demanded answers to what is becoming a familiar line of questions for the company: Are employees based in China have access to the data of US users? What role do those employees play in shaping the TikTok algorithm? Is any of that information shared with the Chinese government?
Currently, China-based employees who adhere to a number of internal security protocols can access certain information about TikTok’s US users, including videos and public comments, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in the letter from the June 30 obtained by Bloomberg News. None of that information is shared with the Chinese government and is subject to “robust cybersecurity controls,” he said.
The social network said it is working with the US government to strengthen data security around that information, particularly anything defined as “protected” by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, or CFIUS. This new effort, dubbed “Project Texas,” includes the physical storage of American information in data centers on American servers owned by software giant Oracle Corp. TikTok is also shifting its platform to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure, which means that the application and algorithm will be accessed and deployed for US users from domestic data centers.
“TikTok’s response confirms that our fears about CCP influence in the company were well founded,” Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee told Bloomberg on Friday. “The Chinese-run company should have come clean from the start, but it tried to hide its work in secret. Americans need to know if they are on TikTok, communist China has their information.”
Several senators, all Republicans, in a June 27 letter cited a report in BuzzFeed News that said the company’s engineers in China accessed TikTok’s US consumer data. The lawmakers said in the letter that TikTok and its parent “are using their access to a treasure trove of American consumer data to police Americans.” The New York Times previously reported on TikTok’s response.
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