A former executive at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has alleged that the Chinese Communist party accessed user data from the social video app belonging to Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists.
Yintao Yu, a former head of engineering at ByteDance’s US operation, claimed in a legal filing that a committee of Communist party members accessed TikTok data that included the users’ network information, Sim card identifications and IP addresses in a bid to identify the individuals and their locations.
The claims, in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit brought by Yu in a California court and reported by the Wall Street Journal, also allege the party accessed TikTok users’ communications, monitored Hong Kong users who uploaded protest-related content and that Beijing-based ByteDance maintained a “backdoor channel” for the party to access US user data.
Yu alleges in the filing that members of a Communist party committee inside ByteDance had access to a “superuser” credential which was also called a “God credential” and allowed them to view all data collected by ByteDance.