TikTok CEO Testifies Company Still Storing Some US User Data Overseas, Raising Security Fears

TikTok continues to store American data on foreign machines, putting it at risk of being accessed and used by the socialist government of China.

During a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on March 23 regarding TikTok’s data and processes and ties to China, CEO Shou Zi Chew provided testimony on the subject.

There is still some data from outside servers that we need to remove today, Chew said.

” I think we can finish it this year.”

Concern over TikTok’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) through parent company ByteDance, a tech behemoth based in Beijing, is largely to blame for the data practices issue.

ByteDance must comply with CCP guidelines, which mandate that any data held by Chinese companies be turned over to the government upon demand. Chinese regulations also mandates that ByteDance maintain a CCP commission as part of its corporate structure.

TikTok’s connections to the CCP through ByteDance, according to Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers( R-Wash ), are an unacceptable national security risk and could be used to carry out espionage or influence campaigns for the regime.

According to Rodgers,” CCP regulations require Taiwanese businesses like ByteDance to snoop on their behalf.” Therefore, any Chinese industry is required to include access to and manipulation of the CCP in its design specifications.

The Chinese Communist Party is able to incorporate TikTok to change America as a whole because it” surveils us all.” TikTok won’t actually accept American worth, in our opinion.

According to TikTok, a new project will obtain US data.

For its part, TikTok has suggested starting a project called” Project Texas” in which it will hold all of its consumer data for Oracle-based cloud base in the US.

Chew referred to the project as” American information stored on British soil by an American company and managed by American officers.”

According to Chew,” The company intends to start the process of deleting non-public historic U. S. consumer data this month and anticipates that it will be finished this year.”

Chew confirmed that until Project Texas is finished, workers of Douyin, the heavily censored TikTok girl application available in China, will still be able to see U.S. consumer information.

Even if Project Texas is successful, he added,” tradition U.S. content” in Singapore won’t been deleted for a very long time.

User information remains available to the Chinese Communist Party until that person data transfer occurs, according to Rep. John Joyce( R – Ohio ).

In Washington, where there is growing worry that TikTok family company ByteDance is effectively an expansion of the CCP, Joyce’s notes highlighted the central issue of many national security concern about the industry.

There is mounting grounds, according to experts, to back up that assertion.

For instance, a March 14 paper that was given to the American authorities discovered that TikTok and ByteDance were both” party-state-controlled entities” that its employees had used to carry out illegal operations against Americans.

In order to settle a class action lawsuit alleging that TikTok illegally harvested Americans’ details and transferred it to Chinese-based companies, the company paid$ 92 million in 2021, according to executives and employees who have admitted that the platform was used as’ harsh instrument’ to censor content significant of the regime.

Employees at TikTok claimed that in 2022, CCP officials in China appeared to have delegated important enterprise decisions to ByteDance before they were delivered to the company.

In order to achieve this, Chew, who formerly held the position of Chief Financial Officer for ByteDance, acknowledged that he maintained normal contact with the company’s CEO, Liang Rubo, to whom the latter really reports directly.