Chairman Gallagher & the Select Committee's Call to the FBI for its Investigation in to TikTok
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Last week, along with the entire bipartisan membership of the China Select Committee, I called on the FBI to update Congress on its investigation into TikTok‘s Chinese parent company, Bytedance, and its ability to surveil and influence Americans through the app.
Last month, Forbes revealed that in preparation for the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress, ByteDance granted Chinese government regulators access to a backend system containing some of TikTok’s most sensitive data.
We now have direct evidence of Chinese government officials accessing a product that hosts secret TikTok information – something TikTok’s CEO swore he had no evidence of when he testified before Congress earlier this year.
Under ByteDance ownership, the CCP can use Tiktok to spy on Americans at will and influence the content they consume.
Last year, ByteDance’s own internal investigators conceded that employees had tracked multiple American journalists covering TikTok, accessing their IP addresses and user data in the process.
New public data analysis of TikTok posts also suggests that ByteDance permits rampant anti-Semitic bias on the platform, while suppressing and censoring content sensitive to the CCP.
Praise for the infamous terrorist Osama Bin Laden recently trended on Tiktok, while pro-Israel hashtags are underrepresented by at least a 2 to 1 margin versus other similar platforms.
According to a recent State Department report, ByteDance even kept a list of users who were likely blocked from TikTok, for reasons such as supporting Uyghur Muslims – currently subject to genocide in China.
A regime that is committing such atrocities should not be able to silence U.S. critics of these policies, let alone be able to surveil U.S. users, prey on American children, and exploit sensitive U.S. data to the detriment of our national security.
FBI Director Chris Wray told the Senate that TikTok “screams” security concerns, but barely elaborated. The American people and their representatives need to hear the same “screams” he’s hearing. The FBI must provide Congress with its findings on ByteDance and TikTok as soon as possible.
The clock is ticking.