The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may be spying on American TikTok users after all.
A former high-level ByteDance executive claimed in a court filing that TikTok has a "back door channel" in its code allowing CCP officials to view data from users anywhere worldwide, including the US and Hong Kong.
ByteDance is TikTok's parent company.
Ex-ByteDance Executive TikTok Claims Details
TikTok is an app at the center of many investigations and government scrutiny worldwide. A significant number of countries, such as the US and Canada, have banned the app from government-issued devices.
Meanwhile, India and Afghanistan banned the use of the app entirely due to it being inconsistent with Islamic laws and national security concerns, respectively, per Mashable.
Many of the countries that banned TikTok from government-issued devices believe that the app provides an avenue for CCP officials to either track or spy on users' data, giving them access to what should have been private or confidential information. In this case, however, their concerns may have been proven right.
Yintao "Roger" Yu, the former ByteDance executive, mentioned in a court filing that the company has a back door channel CCP officials can access to obtain data from users worldwide, especially in the US and Hong Kong, per Gizmodo.
Roger, who was ByteDance's head of engineering in its US branch, mentioned this claim in the lawsuit, first spotted by The Wall Street Journal (paywalled), that he filed in Superior Court in San Francisco in early May for being wrongfully terminated after raising concerns about what he believed were ByteDance's illegal business practices. These practices include allegedly stealing content from Snapchat and Instagram, per CNN.
Roger also claimed that CCP officials had used this back door channel at least once to identify users involved in pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. He also revealed that the CPP and ByteDance officials have a "deep relationship" with each other and that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew downplayed it in public statements.
Additionally, the CCP had a special office or unit in the company; ByteDance gave the people in this unit "superuser" credentials, giving them access to the data ByteDance collects.
If Roger's accusations turn out to be true, it would confirm lawmakers' concerns worldwide about the national security risks TikTok presents. The company is scrambling to avoid a total ban in the US as of press time; it is facing bipartisan scrutiny over national security concerns and its failure to protect underage users from harmful content.
ByteDance's Response To Roger's Claims
A ByteDance spokesperson said in an emailed statement that Roger's claims are "intended to garner media attention," and that the company plans to oppose his claims, which the company describes as baseless allegations.
The spokesperson pointed out that Roger never raised such allegations during the five years after 2018, when ByteDance terminated his employment.
Bloomberg also reports that Roger worked for the company for less than a year and was assigned to a now-discontinued app called Flipagram, per ByteDance's spokesperson.
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