In the wake of Shou Zi, the CEO of TikTok, writing a letter to a group of nine GOP senators who posed questions about whether or not TikTok employees had access to the data from U.S. users, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) called out the company and issued a demand that they come to testify in front of Congress.
The letter from the GOP senators was brought on by a report from Buzzfeed that focused on a bit of leaked audio from an internal meeting at TikTok. The report sported a selection of 14 statements from a group of nine different employees for TikTok “indicating that engineers in China had access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022, at the very least,” stated the Buzzfeed report, adding that the info from the mentioned employees seemed to run against the grain of what was officially stated by TikTok executives via a sworn testimony in front of the U.S. Senate that a “‘world-renowned, US-based security team’ decided who got access to this data.”
“Statements by eight different employees describe situations where US employees had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how US user data was flowing,” stated Buzzfeed. “US staff did not have permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own, according to the tapes.”
“‘Everything is seen in China,’ said a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department in a September 2021 meeting,” stated Buzzfeed in their claim.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew quickly shot back that the report from Buzzfeed “contains allegations and insinuations that are incorrect and are not supported by facts.”
Via their letter, the senators posited, “Is it true that TikTok employees located in China currently have, or had in the past, access to U.S. user data?”
“Employees outside the U.S., including China-based employees, can have access to TikTok user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by our U.S.-based security team,” answered the executive.
“If the Chinese Communist Party asked you for U.S. user data, what is to stop you from providing it? Can the CCP compel you to provide this data, regardless of response? Can they access it regardless of response?” countered the senators.
As highlighted by NBC News, “Chew only partially addressed these questions in his letter, writing, ‘We have not been asked for such data from the CCP. We have not provided U.S. user data to the CCP, nor would we if asked.’”
“TikTok’s response confirms that our fears regarding [Chinese Communist Party] influence within the company are well-founded,” Blackburn stated to NBC News. “They should have come clean from the start but instead tried to shroud their work in secrecy. Americans need to know that if they are on TikTok, Communist China has their information. TikTok needs to come back and testify before Congress.”