Ex-ByteDance Employee: Chinese Communist Party Accessed TikTok Data Of Hong Kong Protesters

Forbes Business Breaking Ex-ByteDance Employee: Chinese Communist Party Accessed TikTok Data Of Hong Kong Protesters Antonio Pequeño IV Forbes Staff I cover breaking news. Following Jun 5, 2023, 09:16pm EDT | Press play to listen to this article! Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Topline A former executive at TikTok’s parent company ByteDance alleged in a court filing that Chinese Communist Party officials accessed data of Hong Kong civil rights activists that used TikTok, according to The Wall Street Journal —a claim that comes amid growing concerns from lawmakers over potential security threats posed by the app. TikTok has denied the allegations put forth by Yu.

(AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File) Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved Key Facts Yintao Yu, who led ByteDance’s U. S.

engineering team from 2017 to 2018 and was based in the company’s California office, spoke out against his former company as part of a wrongful termination lawsuit filed in May, making his latest claim in a court new filing revealed Monday, the Journal reported. The filing claimed that the Chinese Communist party committee accessed and collected IP addresses, SIM card IDs and communication data of users in Hong Kong in 2018, including political activists and protesters, according to the report. The company denied wrongdoing in a statement to The Wall Street Journal , saying they oppose what they believe are “baseless claims and allegations” and noting that Yu waited five years from his termination to raise the issues.

Yu’s attorney told the paper they decided to file the claim after TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified to Congress earlier this year and denied the app’s role in sharing data with the Chinese government, prompting Yu to want to counter the claims made by Chew. TikTok has not yet responded to Forbes’ request for comment. Contra “We vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint,” a spokeswoman for ByteDance told The Wall Street Journal .

Big Number More than 150 million . That is the number of Americans who used TikTok daily as of March. Key Background Yu was fired from TikTok in 2018.

In a separate filing from the same wrongful dismissal suit filed last month by Yu, the former ByteDance executive claimed he was fired for raising concerns about a scheme to steal and profit from the intellectual property of other companies. The suit also alleged ByteDance’s Beijing offices interacted with Chinese Communist party members that monitored company apps and possessed a killswitch that could turn off their apps entirely. U.

S. lawmakers have been strongly skeptical about TikTok and whether or not the data of its American app users is secure. In March, members of Congress strongly questioned the app’s CEO, Chew, as he repeatedly denied that U.

S. TikTok data was being accessed by the Chinese Communist Party. Experts have expressed concern about the app’s threat to national security, its data collection from Americans and how it may influence what videos are shown to American citizens.

Worry about the app has spread to the state level as well. Last month, Montana banned the app over data privacy concerns—a move that has been met with lawsuits from TikTok and its users . Further Reading Former ByteDance Executive Claims Chinese Communist Party Accessed TikTok’s Hong Kong User Data (The Wall Street Journal) Ex-ByteDance Executive Accuses Company of ‘Lawlessness’ (The New York Times) Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

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