Using TikTok, China spied on Hong Kong activists, claims former employee

A former executive at TikTok's parent company ByteDance has claimed that China's Communist Party (CCP) accessed user data collected by the short-video app to spy upon and monitor Hong Kong activists in 2018.

Yintao Yu, the executive who led ByteDance's US engineering team made the stunning revelations in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed in May. The court filings, accessed by Wall Street Journal revealed that the CCP collected IP addresses, SIM card IDs and communication data of users in Hong Kong in 2018.

“Protesters’, supporters’, and civil rights activists’ device identifiers were tracked in addition to their network information, SIM card identifications, and IP addresses,” said Yu during the hearing.

“This information was used to determine both the users’ identity and locations. The TikTok app stores all the users’ direct messages, their search histories, the content viewed by the users, and duration. From the logs, I saw that the Committee accessed the protestors’, civil rights activists’, and supporters’ unique user data, locations, and communications," he added.

God credential: A passkey to access user data

The former employee said the existence of the 'god credential' is a well-known fact amongst the top hierarchy of ByteDance which contradicts the claims made to the legislators in US and other countries.

Yu worked from ByteDance's Menlo Park office in California and also spent time in the company’s offices in Los Angeles and Beijing. He added that the alleged backdoor allowed certain high-level persons in Beijing the ability to access user data, no matter where it was located.

Meanwhile, ByteDance termed Yu's claims as baseless and that he was looking to attract media attention.

“We vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint," said a spokesperson. “His actions are clearly intended to garner media attention."

“We plan to vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint. Mr. Yu worked for ByteDance Inc. for less than a year and his employment ended in July 2018."

The spokesperson added that Yu worked on an app called Flipagram which was discontinued years ago for business reasons.

TikTok has come under heavy scrutiny across the globe for its shoddy data handling practices. Countries such as India and US have imposed a complete or partial ban on the app's operations, primarily because of its CCP connection.

(With inputs from agencies)

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