Ex ByteDance Exec Claims China's Communist Party Had Full Access To TikTok Data

A former ByteDance executive suing the TikTok parent company claims that China’s Communist Party had “supreme access” to all data held by parent Bytedance, including U.S. servers.,

Yintao “Roger” Yu, who was head of engineering for ByteDance’s U.S. operations from August  2017 to November 2018, filed a wrongful termination suit in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging that he was fired after raising concerns about potentially illegal practices, such as alleged content stealing from Snapchat and Instagram.

In addition to alleging that ByteDance has engaged in a “worldwide scheme” to steal and profit from other companies’ intellectual property, Yu claims that the company had a special unit in Beijing run by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members who monitored the company’s apps, “guided how the company advanced” Communist values, and “maintained supreme access to all company data, even data stores in the United States.”

Yu also claims that ByteDance is a “useful propaganda tool” for China’s leaders. He claims  he saw ByteDance being “responsive to the CCP’s requests” to share, elevate or even remove content.”

The committee allegedly also had a “death switch” that could turn off the company’s apps.

ByteDance will “vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint,” the company said in a statement sent to The New York Times. “Mr. Yu worked for ByteDance Inc. for less than a year and his employment ended in July 2018. During his brief time at the company, he worked on an app called Flipagram, which was discontinued years ago for business reasons.”

In March, in testimony before a House committee, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said that he had “seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that [U.S. user] data; they have never asked us, we have not provided it.” He added that TikTok is committed to moving U.S. users’ data into the U.S., to be stored in what he described as “an American company overseen by American personnel.”

The Justice Department is investigating whether China-based TikTok parent ByteDance has been surreptitiously getting and using U.S. TikTok users’ data, including to spy on journalists. 

President Joe Biden has indicated that he supports a bipartisan bill that would broaden the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to allow the president to implement such a ban, and has declared that ByteDance must divest TikTok or face a ban. 

China has stated that it would firmly oppose a sale.

TikTok is already banned on government devices by the U.S. federal government and more than two dozen U.S. states. Last month, Montana became the first state to completely ban the app. A growing number of other countries and regions, including Canada, France and India, have also banned TikTok in part or full.

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