TikTok owner ByteDance acccused of helping China spy on Hong Kong protesters
A former executive at ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has alleged that China’s ruling Communist Party used data from the company to spy on protesters in Hong Kong.
Yintao Yu, the head of engineering for ByteDance in the US, said those same people had access to US user data, an accusation the company denies.
Yu, who worked for the company in 2018, made the allegations in a recent filing for a wrongful dismissal case filed in May in the San Francisco Superior Court.
In the documents submitted to the court, he said ByteDance had a ‘superuser’ credential — also known as a god credential — that enabled a special committee of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members stationed at the company to view all data collected by ByteDance including American users.
The credential acted as a ‘backdoor to any barrier ByteDance had supposedly installed to protect data from the C.C.P’s surveillance,’ said the filing.
Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous region with its own government but a 2020 national security law imposed by China sparked a series of pro-democracy protests.
The controversial extradition bill would allow Hong Kong residents to be extradited to mainland China. It has been used to crack down on dissent and political opposition. The law has also been used to silence pro-democracy media outlets and activists.
Yu said he saw the god credential being used to keep tabs on Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists by monitoring their locations and devices, their network information, SIM card identifications, IP addresses and communications.
ByteDance said in a statement that Yu’s accusations were ‘baseless’.
‘It’s curious that Mr. Yu has never raised these allegations in the five years since his employment for Flipagram was terminated in July 2018,’ the company said, referring to an app that ByteDance later shut down for business reasons.
‘His actions are clearly intended to garner media attention. We plan to vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint,’ ByteDance said.
Yu’s lawyer said that he chose to raise the allegations because he was ‘disturbed to hear the recent Congressional testimony of TikTok’s CEO’ when Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean, vehemently denied Chinese authorities had access to user data.
‘Telling the truth openly in court is risky, but social change requires the courage to tell the truth,’ said Jung. ‘It’s important to him that public policy be based on accurate information, so he’s determined to tell his story.’
In an earlier court filing, Yu accused ByteDance of serving as a ‘propaganda tool’ for the Chinese Communist Party by promoting nationalistic content and demoting content that does not serve the party’s aims. He also said that ByteDance was responsive to the Communist Party’s requests to share information.
Yu also accused ByteDance of scraping content from competitors and users to repost on its sites to exaggerate key engagement metrics. He says he was fired for sharing his concerns about ‘wrongful conduct’ he saw with others in the company.
In mainland China, ByteDance operates Douyin, which is targeted at the domestic market, while TikTok is a global app available in most other countries.
TikTok pulled out of Hong Kong in 2020 following the imposition of the national security law. Anyone who tries to open TikTok from within Hong Kong will see a message that reads ‘We regret to inform you that we have discontinued operating TikTok in Hong Kong’.
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