Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called for TikTok to be investigated following reports that Chinese Community Party officials have access to Americans' data.
In a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, Rubio and Warner, vice chair and chair of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, asked for the FTC to include TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in that investigation, according to a July 6 news release.
“TikTok’s Trust and Safety department was aware of these improper access practices and governance irregularities, which – according to internal recordings of TikTok deliberations – offered [People's Republic of China]-based employees unfettered access to user information, including birthdates, phone numbers and device identification information,” the senators wrote, according to the release. “Recent updates to TikTok’s privacy policy, which indicate that TikTok may be collecting biometric data such as faceprints and voiceprints (i.e. individually-identifiable image and audio data, respectively), heighten the concern that data of U.S. users may be vulnerable to extrajudicial access by security services controlled by the CCP.”
The Chinese Communist Party owns part of Beijing-based ByteDance Technology, contradicting claims from TikTok, the release reported.
In a 2019 post on its website, TikTok said all data on American users is stored in the U.S., and the Chinese government does not have any control over the data. TikTok emphasized its commitment to transparency, accountability and security.
However, leaked audio from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings demonstrated that ByteDance employees based in China do have access to private data concerning U.S. users, BuzzFeed reported.
“Everything is seen in China,” said one member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department, during a meeting in September 2021, the BuzzFeed article said.
“We know we're among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of U.S. user data,” TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said in a statement, according to BuzzFeed. “That's why we hire experts in their fields, continually work to validate our security standards and bring in reputable, independent third parties to test our defenses.”
