Two US senators are urging the FTC to investigate TikTok after leaked audio recordings indicated that employees in China have access to TikTok user data.
“These revelations undermine longstanding claims by TikTok’s management that the company’s operations were firewalled from demands of the Chinese Communist Party,” Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Mark Warner (D-Virginia) said in a statement.
On Tuesday, the two senators sent a letter to the FTC, calling on the agency to launch an investigation into TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, on the grounds that the Chinese company engaged in unfair, deceptive acts.
The senators are also urging the FTC to “coordinate this work with any national security or counterintelligence investigation that may be initiated by the US Department of Justice.”
The senators cite a June report from BuzzFeed, which obtained the audio recordings from 80 internal TikTok meetings. They indicate that ByteDance’s Chinese employees had access to US-based TikTok user data as recently as January 2022, despite the company’s claims the personal data was not accessible from China.
At one point in the audio recordings, a TikTok director describes a Beijing-based engineer at ByteDance as a “Master Admin,” who has “access to everything.” That includes birthdays, phone numbers, and device identification information. The senators are also worried TikTok might be collecting biometric data from users, such as “faceprints and voiceprints,” which could then be passed to the Chinese government.
In addition, Sens. Rubio and Warner note that TikTok may have “misrepresented its corporate governance practices” during past meetings with US lawmakers. “In light of repeated misrepresentations by TikTok concerning its data security, data processing, and corporate governance practices, we urge you to act promptly on this matter,” the senators told the FTC.
TikTok is downplaying the data privacy threat. In a post on Tuesday, the video app said its staff sometimes needs access to internal user data, but for engineering purposes. “That access is subject to a series of robust controls, safeguards like encryption for certain data, and authorization approval protocols overseen by our US-based security team,” TikTok said.
In a statement sent to PCMag, a TikTok spokeperson added: "For two years, we've talked openly about our work to limit access to user data across regions, and in our letter to senators last week we were clear about our progress in limiting access even further through our work with Oracle. As we've said repeatedly, TikTok has never shared US user data with the Chinese government, nor would we if asked."The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.