By Todd Spangler
The CEO of TikTok tried
to reassure U.S. lawmakers — who have renewed concerns over its sharing of U.S.
user data with employees in China — that the video app company is taking steps
to restrict that access to only a “narrow” slice of data.
TikTok
CEO Shou Zi Chew sent a letter dated June 30 to nine GOP senators in
response to their inquiry this week “demanding answers on TikTok’s
backdoor data access for Beijing,” a reference to China’s communist regime.
Fears that TikTok represents a national security threat go back several years.
In August 2020, President Trump ordered TikTok’s
Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell majority control of TikTok to
American entities under the threat of TikTok being shut down in the U.S.; that
was blocked by U.S. federal courts.
In his letter to the Republican senators, Chew wrote, “Many
of your questions appear to stem from a recent BuzzFeed article, which contains
allegations and insinuations that are incorrect and are not supported by
facts.”
That’s a reference to a June 17 BuzzFeed News report that TikTok employees in China
have “repeatedly” accessed U.S.-based users’ data. According to Chew, the
access TikTok has granted to staffers in China to U.S. user data is part of
efforts to shut off that access — with a goal of making “substantive progress
toward compliance with a final agreement with the U.S. Government that will
fully safeguard user data and U.S. national security interests.” News of
TikTok’s letter was first reported by the New York Times.
TikTok — which claims to have more than 1 billion monthly
users — says employees outside the U.S., including China-based employees,
currently are allowed to access TikTok U.S. user data “subject to a series of
robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by
our U.S.-based security team.”
Going forward, the Chew wrote, “certain China-based
employees will have access to a narrow, non-sensitive set of TikTok U.S. user
data, such as the public videos and comments available to anyone, to ensure
global interoperability so our U.S. users, creators, brands and merchants are
afforded the same rich and safe TikTok experience as global users.” Chew said
that access “will be very limited” and will not include private TikTok U.S.
user information, “and it will only occur pursuant to protocols being developed
with the U.S. Government.”
In addition, TikTok continues to maintain that it has never
shared data with the Chinese Communist Party, and that the Chinese authorities
have not made any such requests. “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,”
Chew wrote in the letter.
Chew reiterated TikTok’s recent claim that “100% of U.S.
user traffic” is now being routed to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure and that it
eventually plans to delete all American user data from its Singapore data
centers. Chew’s letter also noted that the exec is a Singaporean national who
resides in Singapore.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.), who spearheaded the GOP’s
information request to TikTok, said in response to Chew’s letter, “TikTok’s
response confirms our fears about the CCP’s influence in the company were well
founded.” The senator added in a statement, “The Chinese-run company should
have come clean from the start, but it attempted to shroud its work in secrecy.
Americans need to know [that] if they are on TikTok, Communist China has their
information.”
Earlier this week, Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner
of the FCC, ratcheted up political pressure on TikTok in the wake of the
BuzzFeed News report. On Twitter, Carr posted a letter to Apple
and Google urging the tech giants to remove TikTok from their app stores —
calling the app that’s popular for sharing viral dance trends and comedy
sketches “an unacceptable national security risk.” The FCC does not have
authority to regulate apps.
https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/services/files/A5027CD8-73DE-4571-95B0-AA7064F707C1
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