The ongoing battle between the United States and TikTok continues as the Department of Justice has alleged that the video-based company has shipped personal information to China.
This information is said by the Department to have allowed profiling of the app’s users to take place.
This all comes from a new filing that has emerged while the duo are engaged in a major disagreement that would see the app’s parent company ByteDance having to force a sale of the platform’s US-based operations. If this doesn’t happen, a full closure is required.
This document was filed on Friday, 26 July and on 16 September, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments. It’s then that the future of TikTok will be decided, following months of back-and-forth between the two.
The last few months have all come about as US lawmakers are concerned the 170 million Americans who use the app could be having their data accessed by China.
The filing points to an internal tool called Lark, also known as ‘Feishu,’ which is apparently what TikTok staff use for internal communication. The filing says this hosts TikTok’s internal platforms and allows employees to interface directly with engineers in China.
It’s through Lark that the DoJ alleges “significant amounts of restricted US user data (including but not limited to personally identifiable information)” was shared.
They say this has resulted in “certain sensitive U.S. person data being contained in Lark channels and, therefore, stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees located in China.”
The filing further claims that an internal project was created in 2022 that “aimed at identifying and removing certain sensitive U.S. user data improperly maintained on Lark channels.
“At least as of 2022, Lark contained multiple internal search tools that had been developed and run by China-based ByteDance engineers for scraping TikTok user data, including U.S. user data.”
They say this allowed “China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.”
Featured Image via Ideogram
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