Ministry of Justice United States of America The owner is investigating the Chinese company ByteDance. TikTokfor him possible espionage US citizens, including journalists, as verified by internal sources of Forbes magazine.
The investigation opened late last year and appears to be linked to the company’s admission in December that some of its employees abused their access to user data to monitor two Forbes reporters devoted to informing the popular video platform. With this tracking, they tried to discover leaking confidential information and documents to them from within the company. After the scandal emerged, ByteDance dismissed those responsible.
The FBI and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia were also involved in a federal criminal investigation that came at a critical time for TikTok. Earlier this week, the White House toughened its stance by demanding that ByteDance’s Chinese owners sell their stake in the company and threatened to press for a deal. full application ban if they don’t. The US Congress is already processing a veto of ‘implementation’.
This request responds to Washington’s suspicions, which fears that TikTok users’ data could fall into the hands of the Xi Jinping government. Two of the employees involved in this user privacy breach operated from China.
restraint wave
Although unproven, the theory TikTok is a Trojan horse from Beijing Gathering information and undermining the democratic institutions of hostile countries found their way among US allies. In recent weeks, countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Belgium, as well as the European Commission, have banned their authorities from using the platform from government mobile phones; this is a restriction currently enforced by more than a dozen US states. Spain has not yet chosen this path.