contentious hearing: Tiktok repeatedly refuses to answer, heated exchange: a lot to hide, CCP member


On 9/13/2022, Senator Josh Hawley got into a heated exchange with TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas about the social media giant’s ties to the Chinese government in a hearing. Hawley repeatedly asked if any TikTok employees were members of the Chinese Communist Party. “We’ve said many times, Senator, that we do have Chinese engineers based in China,” Pappas said. “I don’t think there’s any platform up here that would be able to speak to what you’re talking about as it relates to the political affiliation of an individual.” She later added that the company’s leadership team is based in the United States and Singapore.

Pappas was also asked about a BuzzFeed News story that TikTok user data had been repeatedly accessed by employees based in China. She said that “those allegations were not found,” and emphasized the company’s “strict access controls” and its work with Oracle.

Tiktok testified under oath that it does not share data with the CCP. TikTok also testified under oath that it could not speak to whether the Beijing-based personnel it shares data with are members of the CCP. Hawley questioned if both statements can be true.

Hawley, citing reporting from Forbes, expressed frustration that Pappas would not say whether any Chinese employees working on TikTok are members of the Chinese Communist Party. Hawley asked: “Are there members of the Chinese Communist Party employed by TikTok or ByteDance, or no?” Pappas answered that no person who “makes a strategic decision at this platform” is a CCP member. But with respect to the rest of the app’s staff, she said the company does not vet its employees based on their political affiliations.

Hawley continued: “Would it surprise you to learn that Forbes Magazine recently reported that at least 300 current TikTok or ByteDance employees were members of Chinese state media?” Pappas reiterated that the company does not “look at the political affiliations of individuals.” Visibly frustrated, Hawley said, “Your company has a lot to hide. You’re a walking security nightmare, and for every American who uses this app, I’m concerned.”

Hawley confronted Pappas with details from the report that employees in China had accessed U.S. user data. “Is it your testimony that this is false?” he asked, “all of this is false?” Pappas said she disagreed “with the categorization in that article,” but conceded in a follow-up that China-based employees “have accessed [US users’] data. Pappas was also unwilling to promise that China-based employees would not have access to U.S. TikTok user data in the future. Senator Rob Portman asked whether TikTok would commit to “cut off all data and metadata flows to China, China-based TikTok employees, ByteDance employees, or any other party located in China,” but Pappas twice declined to make that commitment. Instead, she invoked TikTok’s ongoing contract negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, stating that when finalized, the agreement “will satisfy all national security concerns.”

The hearing, convened by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, sought to assess social media’s impact on national security. The senators were focused on the app’s ties to China. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have come under fire in recent months following reports that ByteDance employees in China regularly accessed sensitive U.S. user data from TikTok, and that another ByteDance app, the now-defunct TopBuzz, promoted pro-China narratives to U.S. users. (TikTok confirmed the first report; ByteDance denied the second.) The app has since become the subject of a bipartisan investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee and a recently introduced bill in Congress.

It’s not very clear TikTok’s relationship to its parent company, ByteDance. While TikTok has assured U.S. lawmakers that it does not share data with the Chinese government, ByteDance has not made such an assurance, despite prior reporting showing that ByteDance controls many of TikTok’s internal tools and has employees who work directly on TikTok.

https://facebook.com/HygoNewsUSA/videos/418729103719348/
contentious hearing: Tiktok repeatedly refuses to answer, heated exchange: a lot to hide, any CCP members share data?

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