According to the Department of Justice, TikTok, a Chinese-owned app, has allegedly transmitted highly sensitive personal data of American users to the Chinese Communist Party.
This data has reportedly been used to create profiles of users based on their stances on issues such as gun control and abortion.
The DOJ further stated in a recent submission that TikTok employees utilize an internal communication tool called Lark, through which substantial quantities of confidential user information from the US were shared.
“This resulted in certain sensitive U.S. person data being contained in Lark channels and, therefore, stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees located in China,” the DOJ continues in its filing.
To make matters worse, the DOJ goes on to allege that “Lark contained multiple internal search tools that had been developed and run by China-based ByteDance engineers for scraping TikTok user data, including U.S. user data.”
Those tools allowed for Chinese communists to collect and view “bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion,” the filing states.
The DOJ also claims that TikTok tools allow for “triggering of the suppression of content on the platform based on the user’s use of certain words. Although this tool contained certain policies that only applied to users based in China, others such policies may have been used to apply to TikTok users outside of China.”
Additionally, the filing mentions tech giant Oracle. Despite U.S. government attempts to block advanced AI chip access for Chinese entities, some American companies, such as Oracle, are discovering methods to bypass these restrictions.
Oracle has notably assisted China’s TikTok by leasing AI chips to the social media company. It is worth noting that Oracle’s role in overseeing TikTok’s source code was declined due to the extensive volume of code requiring a review period of at least three years.
“But the source code is not static,” the DOJ filing states. “ByteDance regularly updates it to add and modify TikTok’s features. Even with Oracle’s considerable resources, perfect review would be an impossibility.”
The Department of Justice stated that Oracle and other technology providers would not have the ability to determine whether they possess sufficient information to perform the task accurately.
“Private parties also lack insight into ByteDance’s communications with PRC officials, ByteDance’s use of U.S. user data, and ByteDance’s other TikTok-related activities,” the filing asserts.
Therefore, U.S. authorities “determined that the Final Proposed NSA presented too great a risk because the trusted technology provider and other monitors faced massive scope and scale hurdles that could not be overcome.”
The FTC recently alerted the DOJ that the Chinese app may be violating U.S. child privacy laws. The investigation into TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance has led to concerns that they are in breach of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Separately, legislation has been passed calling for ByteDance to sell TikTok by January or face a ban in the United States due to its ties with the Chinese Communist Party.
This move comes after ongoing worries about a popular social media platform being controlled by Chinese communists, posing a danger to children and teens. There have also been allegations of the parent company snooping on journalists.
TikTok is facing lawsuits from grieving families who hold the social media platform responsible for their children’s deaths.
Additionally, lawmakers from both political parties view TikTok as a national security threat and have already prohibited its use on U.S. government devices.
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