Lawmakers Call On U.S. Intelligence To Investigate TikTok

TikTok has surpassed more than 110 million downloads in the United States, which may be a cause for alarm to some lawmakers. Late Wednesday night, senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a request to counterintelligence officials requesting an investigation into TikTok's potential "national security risks."

Questioning its data-collection and censorship practices of the Chinese-owned company, Schumer and Cotton outlined their concerns over the application and its parent company, ByteDance, in a letter to acting Director of National Security Joseph MacGuire.

"With over 110 million downloads in the U.S. alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore," wrote Schumer and Cotton in a letter reported by the Washington Post. "Given these concerns, we ask that the Intelligence Community conduct an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok and other China-based content platforms operating in the U.S. and brief Congress on these findings."

TikTok was quick to defend their practices in a blog post, stating they are "committed to transparency and accountability." The company claims that U.S. data is not stored in China, nor is that data "subject to Chinese law." That data, they say, is stored in the U.S. and backed up in Singapore.

When it comes to issues of censorship, the post states: "TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked. Period."

However, the post did not refute portions of the app's own terms and services, which states that content is "required to adhere to the laws of China," which could "compel Chinese companies to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party," according to Schumer and Cotton. This type of censorship has come into question in the past, as a study reported by the Washington Post, found that there was less content about the Hong Kong protests than other platforms.

Additionally, Schumer and Cotton believe that TikTok could be used by hostile governments in election interference campaigns. They called TikTok, "[A] potential target of foreign influence campaigns like those carried out during the 2016 election on U.S.-based social media platforms."

This wouldn't be the first time that TikTok has been the subject of congressional speculation. In early October 2019, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl) asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to look into ByteDance's 2017 purchase of Musical.ly. At the time he warned of the "Chinese government’s nefarious efforts to censor information inside free societies around the world cannot be accepted and pose serious long-term challenges to the U.S. and our allies."