Senators say TikTok may have misled Congress about handling US user data
Two senators sent a letter to TikTok’s CEO on Tuesday, accusing the company of making misleading claims to Congress about how it stores and processes US user data, and demanding answers to more than a dozen questions by the end of next week .
The letter, from Connecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal and Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn, focused on how to store sensitive data about US users in China and make it accessible to employees there.
Lawmakers said recent reports from The New York Times and Forbes raised questions about statements made during congressional testimony in March by Shou Chew, TikTok’s CEO, and at an October 2021 hearing at which Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head public policy for America, was involved. TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
“We are deeply concerned by TikTok’s recurring pattern of providing misleading, inaccurate or false information to Congress and its users in the United States, including in response to us during oversight hearings and letters,” they wrote.
TikTok has been working for years to convince the US government it can separate its US operations and shield US user data amid concerns that the company could provide that information to Chinese authorities.
Forbes reported last month that TikTok stored creators’ sensitive financial information, including social security numbers and tax numbers, on servers in China, which employees there can access. TikTok uses ByteDance’s internal tools and databases to manage payments to creators who earn money through the app, according to Forbes.
The Times reported earlier this month that US user data, including driver’s licenses and potentially illegal content such as child sexual abuse material, was shared on TikTok and ByteDance through an internal messaging and collaboration tool called Lark.
The information was often available in Lark “groups” — employee chat rooms — with thousands of members, alarming some employees because ByteDance employees in China and elsewhere could easily see the material. The Times discovered that Lark data was stored on servers in China late last year. At the time, TikTok did not respond to questions about whether Lark data is currently stored in China.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.