A whistleblower told Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that TikTok and ByteDance employees based in China can easily access U.S. data with the click of a button. That includes members of the Chinese Communist Party on the company’s payroll.
According to Hawley, the whistleblower also said, “TikTok and ByteDance are functionally the same company. They use the same data analysis tools and chat apps, and managers are in constant contact.”
Now, Sen. Hawley is asking Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to investigate these claims in her capacity as chairwoman of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Hawley wrote that the whistleblower is a former employee of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance. The senator’s office did not release the raw information or materials provided by the whistleblower to protect his identity.
Members of Congress are very concerned about TikTok’s data storage practices and have been working on bills to address it. Because ByteDance is based in China, it’s believed the Chinese Communist Party can access American’s data and use it to their advantage.
“China-based engineers can access American’s data. That it is, like in the whistleblower’s words, ‘flipping a switch.’ That there are no meaningful controls or firewalls between American’s data and between China based engineers’ ability to access it. It’s hugely disturbing,” Hawley told Straight Arrow News.
This whistleblower account is at odds with what TikTok executives have told Congress. In a June 2022 letter, TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew told lawmakers, “We have not provided U.S. user data to the CCP, nor would we if asked.”
“Employees outside the U.S., including China-based employees, can have access to TikTok U.S. user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity protocols and authorization approval protocols,” Shou added.
“They admit now that ByteDance has almost total control over TikTok. They are functionally one in the same, the whistleblower confirmed that as well. So listen, you cannot believe what these folks are saying. They will say anything to try and make a buck and also preserve their access to Beijing,” Hawley said.
Hawley hopes this revelation will encourage the Biden administration to force ByteDance to sell TikTok. If not, he said it needs to be banned in the United States.
