The US government's Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals by foreign
acquirers for potential national security risks, in 2020 ordered Chinese parent
company ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that the US user data could
be passed on to China's communist government.
Last week, TikTok said it has completed
migrating information on its US users to servers at Oracle, as it seeks to
address US concerns over data integrity.
Senators Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse, Mike Braun,
Marco Rubio, Todd Young and Roger Wicker asked Yellen numerous questions saying
the administration "has seemingly done nothing to enforce" the August
2020 divestiture order." They noted "the results of the security
reviews, likewise, have not been publicly released after one year."
The senators want to know "will TikTok
be locally managed in the United States?" and "Will the US government
have the ability to routinely access and inspect the algorithm's source
code?" It also asks "what assurances does the US government have that
TikTok will store US data and adopt privacy policies with adequate
protections?"
TikTok did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
Former President Donald Trump attempted to
block new users from downloading WeChat and TikTok and ban other transactions
that would have effectively blocked the apps' use in the United States but lost
a series of court battles.
President Joe Biden in June 2021 withdrew a
series of Trump's executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of the apps
and ordered the Commerce Department to conduct a review of security concerns
posed by the apps.
The senators said the proposal for TikTok
to store its US users' information without ByteDance access "would do
little to address the core security concerns."
CFIUS has been in extensive discussions
with TikTok on security issues, sources have said. A spokesman for Yellen
declined to comment Friday.
TikTok is one of the world's most popular
social media apps, with more than 1 billion active users globally, and counts
the US as its largest market. © Reuters