Former ByteDance Exec Claims CCP ‘Maintained’ Access to US Data
The Chinese Communist Party “maintained supreme access” to data belonging to TikTok parent company ByteDance, including data stored in the U.S., a former top executive claimed in a lawsuit Friday…
In a wrongful dismissal suit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Yintao Yu said ByteDance “has served as a useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.” Yu, whose claim says he served as head of engineering for ByteDance’s U.S. offices from August 2017 to November 2018, alleged that inside the Beijing-based company, the CCP “had a special office or unit, which was sometimes referred to as the ‘Committee’.” The “Committee” didn’t work for ByteDance but “played a significant role,” in part by “gui[ding] how the company advanced core Communist values,” the lawsuit claims… The CCP could also access U.S. user data via a “backdoor channel in the code,” the suit states…
In an interview with the New York Times, which first reported the lawsuit, Yu said promoting anti-Japanese sentiment was done without hesitation.
“The allegations come as federal officials weigh the fate of the social media giant in the U.S. amid growing concerns over national security and data privacy,” the article adds.
Yu also accused ByteDance of a years-long, worldwide “scheme” of scraping data from Instagram and Snapchat to post on its own services.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.