- Public Citizen on Thursday urged lawmakers and the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate TikTok and ByteDance.
- The consumer rights group joins a growing chorus of calls to investigate the Beijing-based company.
US advocacy group Public Citizen in a letter on Thursday urged American lawmakers and the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate the TikTok app and its parent company, ByteDance, joining a growing number of calls to investigate reports that the Beijing-based company planned to use the video-based social media app to surveil specific Americans.
After reviewing internal materials, Forbes reported last week that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use location information gathered from US users of the TikTok app for surveillance of two American citizens who were not employees of the app. While accessing user location data is allowed for purposes like targeting ads or preventing fraudlent activity, the company's surveillance plans were not related to these user-approved purposes, according to the outlet.
Representatives for ByteDance and TikTok did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment about the Public Citizen letter, but in a statement previously provided to Insider's Travis Clark a TikTok spokesperson denied the app has been used to "target" members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists and said it "does not collect precise GPS location information from US users."
In its Thursday letter, the nonprofit consumer rights group Public Citizen urged the FTC to investigate and "take immediate action against ByteDance and Tiktok" if the reports of surveillance are substantiated.
"This threatens a Big Brother-type surveillance that is antithetical to democratic values, may threaten individuals' personal security and violates the most basic societal expectations about personal privacy," the letter written by Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, read. "That there are a few disturbing precedents for platforms tracking individuals exacerbates rather than diminishes the concern about the Forbes report... Such a practice could put our privacy, physical safety, and national security at risk."
American lawmakers and privacy advocates alike expressed similar concern following the Forbes report. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who has previously been critical of TikTok's ties to China, tweeted it was "not surprising" the company planned to surveil US users and advocated for a national privacy law. Alan Butler, executive director and president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), echoed the concerns about user privacy and called for stronger location data protections.
Earlier this summer, Sens. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, called for a separate FTC investigation after BuzzFeed News reported that sensitive data from US users was repeatedly accessed by ByteDance staff in China, despite the company's assurances that US user data was stored in the states and was inaccessible abroad.
"We write in response to public reports that individuals in the People's Republic of China (PRC) have been accessing data on U.S. users, in contravention of several public representations, including sworn testimony in October 2021," the senators wrote in a letter addressed to FTC Chair Lina Khan. "In light of this new report, we ask that your agency immediately initiate a Section 5 investigation on the basis of apparent deception by TikTok, and coordinate this work with any national security or counter-intelligence investigation that may be initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice."
The app's links to the Chinese government have long spurred concerns over propaganda, fake news, and data privacy — with the Trump administration in 2020 even proposing a total ban of TikTok. In 2021, the Biden administration promised a security review of foreign-owned apps, but has yet to publish its results.
"It is critical that you act with urgency to uncover the full extent of individually targeted surveillance practices, if any, and hold these companies accountable for any misconduct," Public Citizen's letter read.