POLAND - 2019/12/04: In this photo illustration a TikTok logo seen displayed on a smartphone with Chinese flag on the background. (Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are investigating Chinese company ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, for surveilling Americans, according to Forbes.
The DOJ Fraud Section and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia subpoenaed information from the company about its employees’ efforts to access the location and other private information of American journalists through TikTok, Forbes reported, citing an anonymous source. The FBI is conducting interviews on the same subject.
ByteDance employees used TikTok data last year to track the location of journalists who were reporting on the company and gained access to their IP addresses in an attempt to see if they had been in the same location as ByteDance employees. The company has acknowledged the surveillance and condemned the employees responsible for it.
“We have strongly condemned the actions of the individuals found to have been involved, and they are no longer employed at ByteDance. Our internal investigation is still ongoing, and we will cooperate with any official investigations when brought to us,” a spokesman told Forbes.
TikTok previously pledged to spend $1.5 billion storing Americans’ data in the U.S. with an American team overseen by the U.S. government in order to allow its continued ownership by ByteDance, but ByteDance’s admission that its employees surveilled American journalists contradicted promises it had made to the government as part of that plan, according to Forbes. TikTok is considering cutting ties with ByteDance over national security concerns about its ties with the Chinese Communist Party in order to continue operating in the U.S.
TikTok, ByteDance, the FBI, the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District for Virginia did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org
Republican South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden signed a bill Thursday banning the use of eminent…
The legacy Media (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NY Times, etc.) have lost all credibility…
After years of breathtaking incompetence and failure under Joe Biden, Donald Trump decided once again…
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reportedly initiated a document destruction process as part…
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to talk and…
Dear Mary: My wife and I have been married for three years. She has memorized…