Legislators from both sides of the aisle -- Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) -- have teamed up to urge the Federal Trade Commission to investigate over-the-top video clip streaming site TikTok based on reports that suggest the Chinese-based company is not insulated from the Chinese government's demands for data on U.S. users.
Warner and Rubio are the chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan, the senators cited a BuzzFeed story about leaked internal TikTok meeting data showing U.S. user data had been accessed from China.
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They said they wanted her to immediately launch a Sec. 5 investigation, which is an inquiry into potential false and deceptive conduct. That includes that the site offered employees in China "unfettered access to user information, including birthdates, phone numbers, and device identification information."
They told Khan that TikTok had appeared to misrepresent its relationship to its ByteDance parent and subsidiaries, one of which, ByteDance Technology, is partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party, and that updates to TikTok's privacy policy that indicate that the site may be collecting biometric data "heighten their concern." ■
