TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will inform lawmakers the Chinese language-owned brief video app with greater than 150 million American customers has by no means, and would by no means, share U.S. person information with the Chinese language authorities amid rising U.S. nationwide safety issues.
“TikTok has by no means shared, or acquired a request to share, U.S. person information with the Chinese language authorities. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one had been ever made,” Chew will testify on Thursday, in response to written testimony posted on Tuesday by the Home of Representatives Vitality and Commerce Committee.
He added that TikTok’s mum or dad firm ByteDance shouldn’t be owned or managed by any authorities or state entity. “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance shouldn’t be an agent of China or another nation,” Chew will say to the committee.
TikTok’s critics concern that its U.S. person information may very well be handed on to China’s authorities by the app and prompted rising calls to ban the app U.S. lawmakers. Final week, TikTok stated the Biden administration demanded that its Chinese language house owners divest their stake within the app or it might face a U.S. ban.
“Bans are solely applicable when there aren’t any options. However we do have another,” Chew’s testimony stated.
TikTok has stated it has spent greater than $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 1239690 crores) on what it calls rigorous information safety efforts below the identify “Challenge Texas.”
Chew stated when the method is full “all protected U.S. information can be below the safety of U.S. regulation and below the management of the U.S.-led safety staff. Below this construction, there isn’t a method for the Chinese language authorities to entry it or compel entry to it.”
The corporate stated it had began this month to delete U.S. user-protected information in information centres in Virginia and Singapore after it began routing new U.S. information to the Oracle Cloud final yr. Chew’s testimony stated it expects this course of to be accomplished later this yr.
Chew’s testimony says 60 % of ByteDance is owned by world institutional buyers together with Blackrock, Normal Atlantic,
and Sequoia, about 20 % by the corporate’s founders, and about
20 % owned by its staff “together with hundreds of Individuals.”
TikTok stated on Monday that greater than 150 million individuals in the US use TikTok on a month-to-month foundation after saying in 2020 that 100 million Individuals used the app. Chew’s testimony says the typical person at present is an grownup nicely previous faculty age.
“Whereas customers in the US symbolize 10 % of our world neighborhood, their voice accounts for 25 % of the full views around the globe,” Chew’s testimony says.
Chew says present variations of the app don’t gather exact or approximate GPS data from U.S. customers.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
