A House select panel has called on the FBI to provide a briefing on its investigation of video hosting platform TikTok and its parent company ByteDance and state the measures it is taking to safeguard the sensitive data of U.S. citizens from being accessed by the Chinese government.
In a Thursday letter addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party stated that ByteDance provided the Chinese government’s cybersecurity regulators access to TikTok’s backend system containing the social media platform’s most sensitive data.
“Just last December, an internal ByteDance investigation found that employees tracked multiple American journalists covering TikTok and gained access to their IP addresses and user data on TikTok. It is our understanding that DOJ and FBI are investigating these allegations,” the letter writes.
The lawmakers are asking the FBI to provide a classified briefing on the matter no later than Dec. 22.
The letter was signed by 24 House lawmakers, including Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi respectively serve as chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee.
