US Senators Urge Investigation Into TikTok’s “Misrepresentations” of Its Data Security

According to reports on July 5th, two U.S. senators are urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate TikTok’s “repeated misrepresentations” of how it uses data from US users.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner and Vice-Chair Marco Rubio wrote a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan asking the committee to investigate social media platform TikTok and its parent company ByteDance in Communist China.

The letter came after BuzzFeed News reported leaked audio recordings. The recordings showed ByteDance employees “repeatedly” accessing US user data.

In the joint letter, the senators called for an investigation into TikTok because of “apparent deception by TikTok.” The letter mentioned that the app has repeatedly made false statements about its data security, data processing, and corporate governance practices.

The call for a TikTok investigation came less than a week after Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr asked Google and Apple to remove the app from their app stores following a BuzzFeed News report.

TikTok vice president Michael Beckerman wrote in a statement on July 5th that the company’s engineering teams “around the world,” including in Communist China, “might need access to data for engineering functions that are specifically tied to their roles.”