Surprise, surprise: TikTok lying about Chinese spying, former employee tells US Congress
Surprise, surprise: TikTok lying about Chinese spying, former employee tells US Congress
In a big surprise for literally no one, a former TikTok risk manager met with investigators of a congressional committee to express his concerns that the company’s plan for protecting user data in the United States is deeply flawed.
The former TikTok employee pointed to evidence that could further inflame US lawmakers’ suspicion of the short-format video-sharing app at a time when many are considering a nationwide ban on TikTok.
TikTok’s plan to curb China’s access to US data is a farce
As per a report by The Washington Post, a former TikTok employee who worked for six months in the company’s Trust and Safety division before leaving in early 2022, said the issues could expose data from TikTok’s more than 100 million US users to China-based employees of its parent company ByteDance, even as the company rushes to implement new safety rules shielding domestic user information.
These new allegations can severely undermine this $1.5 billion restructuring plan, or Project Texas, which TikTok has been lobbying for in Washington, as a way to neutralize the risk of data theft or misuse by the Chinese government.
These allegations also further support the suspicions that the immensely popular short-video app’s video-recommendation algorithm and user data are still susceptible to being manipulated for propaganda or spying.
TikTok and ByteDance executives have been negotiating with a group of government officials known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States since 2019 about which privacy standards and technological safeguards they would need to implement to meet US national security worries.
The business division of TikTok submitted its proposal to CFIUS in August. However, CFIUS has refused to comment on the proposal in any way and has so far not approved it.
The former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing he will be targeted and may even be put in a dangerous situation by the CCP, told congressional detectives that Project Texas does do much in protecting American data from the Chinese.
Project Texas – TikTok’s proposed process to wall off US TikTok user’s data
He claims that a national prohibition is unneeded to address the technological issues, which he claims can be addressed with “doable and viable” solutions that go beyond Project Texas’s procedures. He claimed he worked internally to resolve data-privacy concerns but was dismissed after voicing his concerns.
Instead, what is required is a complete restructuring and reprogramming of the app itself, how TikTok does its businesses outside China.
Project Texas would wall off TikTok’s US operations into a new subsidiary, TikTok US Data Security, whose leaders would be vetted by the US government and report to CFIUS, according to briefings the company has given to researchers, journalists and members of Congress.
All US user data would be siloed in a system with monitored gateways for authorized use, according to the plan, and TikTok’s code and recommendation algorithms would be reviewed by engineers from Oracle, who could alert US regulators to possible concerns.
He provided the investigators with a snippet of code which he claimed showed TikTok’s ability to connect with systems connected to Toutiao, a famous Chinese news app operated by ByteDance. This link, he claims, could enable for covert interference in the flow of US data.
In response to the whistleblower coming forward, TikTok officials stated that the former employee misinterpreted the plan and that his termination, which occurred months before it was finalised, means he “would have no knowledge of the current status of Project Texas and the many significant milestones the initiative has reached over the last year.”
TikTok also said the whistleblower’s Toutiao claim was “unfounded,” and the code snippet he provided showed no connection or connectivity between the two applications. They claimed that the Toutiao code has no ties to China and is “nothing more than a naming practise and technological relic” from an older ByteDance app.
Meanwhile US officials have also stated that they have already implemented one key pledge of Project Texas by moving Us user data and other critical code to servers run by the American tech behemoth Oracle which further undermines Toutiao officials’ ability to influence TikTok’s US content or operations.
During a legislative meeting later this month, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will most likely be questioned on Project Texas and the potential of Chinese influence.
Chew’s trips to Washington also coincide with an increase in public worry about TikTok, including two recent legislative moves that could result in an unprecedented national app ban. The former employee stated that he visited with staff members in the offices of Senators Charles E. Grassley and Mark R. Warner.
TikTok US knows Project Texas involves lying to the US government
In a December letter to TikTok’s CEO, Chew, the former employee claimed that senior executives were “responsible for the internal fraud pertaining to Project Texas implementation,” which he claimed involved them “intentionally lying” to US government officials about how its controls had been tested and verified.
“Various TikTok execs were excessively pressing me to sign off on Project Texas as if it had already been completed,” he wrote. “Rapid internal investigation to guarantee real risk management and my reinstatement,” he insisted.
The newest whistleblower is also separate from an alleged whistleblower referenced in a Tuesday letter that Sen. Josh Hawley sent to the Treasury Department, first reported by Axios. That person said TikTok’s data-access controls were “superficial” and that China-based engineers could use tools to access US data with “the click of a button,”
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