Senators Warner, Rubio Calling for Investigation of China’s Access to Data of US TikTok Users

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the top Republican member of the panel, are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to mount a formal investigation of the relationship between China and the owner of social media giant TikTok.

“We write in response to public reports that individuals in the People’s Republic of China [PRC] have been accessing data on U.S. users, in contravention of several public representations, including sworn testimony in October 2021,” the senators told commission chairman Linda Khan in a letter made public late on July 5.

“In light of this new report, we ask that your agency immediately initiate a Section 5 investigation on the basis of apparent deception by TikTok, and coordinate this work with any national security or counter-intelligence investigation that may be initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice,” the senators told Kahn.

Warner and Rubio were referring to recent Epoch Times and other media reports that indicate individuals associated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have regular access to data on American users of TikTok.

That flatly contradicts multiple assertions made to Congress and others by officials with bytedance, which owns TikTok, that U.S. users’ data is not made available to Chinese officials.

“In an interview with the online publication Cyberscoop, the Global Chief Security Officer for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, made a number of public representations on the data security practices of TikTok, including unequivocal claims that the data of American users is not accessible to the Chinese Communist Party and the government of the PRC,” the letter continued.

“As you know, TikTok’s privacy practices are already subject to a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission, based on its improper collection and processing of personal information from children,” Warner and Rubio said.

The two senators are

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