(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Regulators in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States endeavored to make a back-door deal with TikTok that would have granted the federal government an unprecedented amount of control over the app, effectively allowing them to spy on American citizens.
The government requested surveillance via the app, despite having condemned similar tactics that they accused Chinese Communist Party officials of using to undermine U.S. national security, according to the Post Millennial.
CFIUS drafted a proposal demanding greater access to the app and its records for the Justice and Defense departments in the summer of 2022.
If ByteDance—the parent company of TikTok—had agreed to the terms, federal actors would have had more access to the platform than to any other social media company. Feds would have power to search TikTok’s U.S. headquarters, files and servers without a warrant and without warning.
Federal officials also would have had power to stop changes to the platform’s terms of service.
After Gizmodo published a report on the government’s demands, TikTok issued a statement making it clear that they had worked with CFIUS for over a year.
“As has been widely reported, we’ve been working with CFIUS… to implement a national security agreement and have invested significant resources in implementing a firewall to isolate US user data,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
“Today, all new protected US user data is stored in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the US with tightly controlled and monitored gateways,” it continued. “We are doing more than any peer company to safeguard US national security interests.”
TikTok has been criticized on a variety of fronts by both conservatives and leftists for posing security risks that undermine U.S. interests and values.
Many experts have cautioned about the invasive data-tracking practices by Chinese companies, domestic influence from billionaires seeking to sway elections and migrants smugglers seeking to bring illegal immigrants across America’s southern border.
The video-streaming platform, which caters predominately to a younger audience, also has been slammed by watchdog users such as Libs of TikTok for giving a platform to toxic content that promotes a Marxist agenda and the decay of traditional moral values, including radical transgender theory. By contrast, the Chinese version offers educational content.
The DOJ investigated ByteDance after revelations of workers spying on users, particularly several prominent journalists.
The Senate unanimously passed a ban on TikTok for all government devices in December.
