According to a former official of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has backdoor access to all users’ data, including data kept in the United States.
Yintao “Roger” Yu made the claims in a lawsuit filed in California state court on Friday for wrongful termination from his position.
Yu, who was the chief of engineering for ByteDance’s US headquarters from August 2017 to November 2018, stated that the company offered the Chinese Communist Party “supreme access” to all TikTok app data.
Yu said in his complaint that he was fired after complaining to supervisors about “brazenly unlawful conduct” at the organization.
He also claimed that inside the Beijing-based company, the Chinese Communist Party “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 “guiding how the company advanced core Communist values,” the lawsuit claims.
Allegations of Intellectual Property Theft, Manipulation, and Government Influence
ByteDance has called the charges “baseless” and stated that it will challenge the former employee’s claims in court.
“ByteDance is committed to respecting the intellectual property of other companies, and we acquire data in accordance with industry practices and our global policy,” a spokesperson said in a statement, which noted that Yu worked for the company for less than a year, reports Bloomberg.
The former employee also claimed that when he raised his concerns about the tech firm stealing copyrighted content from other platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, as well as manufacturing users to boost its metrics and help China’s Communist Party spread propaganda to a larger audience, his former superiors dismissed his concerns.
He was also outraged by TikTok CEO Shou Chew’s “misdirection” during his March hearing before Congress to soothe national security worries about the platform’s ties to China.
“It was known within the company that a special government-controlled committee had a significant role even though it did not work for ByteDance, Yu said.
“The Committee maintained supreme access to all the company data, even data stored in the United States,” according to the suit.
“After receiving criticism about access from abroad, individual engineers in China were restricted from accessing U.S. user data, but the Committee continued to have access.”
