Documents: a China-based ByteDance audit and risk control team planned to collect TikTok location data of specific US citizens never employed by the company
The project, assigned to a Beijing-led team, would have involved accessing location data from some U.S. users' devices without their knowledge or consent.
ForbesEmily Baker-White
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported plan adds location tracking of nonemployees to an existing record of China-based access to U.S. TikTok user information: internal-meeting leaks had already described repeated access by ByteDance staff in China between September 2021 and January 2022. TikTok had said China-based employees could access certain U.S. user information after security clearance.
Later coverage makes the issue less about a single team than about whether access boundaries can be enforced: Project Texas personnel were reportedly asked to route data outside official channels, while ByteDance and TikTok operations remained intertwined across China and the U.S..
First-order effects
The Beijing-led ByteDance audit and risk-control team is tied to a proposed use of TikTok device-location data on named U.S. citizens who had no employment relationship with the company, putting consent and internal access controls at the center of the allegation.
TikTok’s assurance that China-based staff access U.S. information through security protocols faces a more exacting test when the reported data use concerns location and specific individuals rather than generalized operational access.
Second-order effects
TikTok’s U.S. data-separation effort must address informal requests as well as formal permissions, given reports that Project Texas staff were asked to send email and IP data to ByteDance outside official channels.
ByteDance’s later firing of four employees over access to U.S. user data to identify reporting sources reinforces that the practical enforcement of access rules, not their existence alone, becomes the relevant control question.
Third-order effects
If repeated reports of cross-border access and unofficial data routing persist, TikTok’s governance challenge shifts toward operational sovereignty: proving that U.S. user data can be controlled independently of ByteDance’s China-based organization.
The pattern points to privacy oversight increasingly focusing on purpose limitation and auditable access paths for sensitive data, rather than simply whether a company has a stated consent or security policy.
The trend: Cross-border consumer-data governance is moving from policy commitments toward scrutiny of who can access sensitive data, for what purpose, and through which operational channel.
3/ TikTok has never been used to “target” any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users.
2/ Specifically, Forbes chose not to include the portion of our statement that disproved the feasibility of its core allegation: TikTok does not collect precise GPS location information from US users, meaning TikTok could not monitor US users in the way the article suggested.
TikTok's Washington-based public affairs team is offering thread-length lectures on “integrity.” A few months ago, Senators Warner and Rubio (Dem chair and GOP vice chair of Senate intel cmte) accused the company of having “misrepresented” its policies to Congress. https://twitte…
You lack rigor and integrity. You've executed your usual distractive detail-picking like you did with my Senate testimony and with others who've spent their careers in China. You refuse to address elementary questions. Sounds like a response written by TikTok PR @brookeOB1 https:…
4/ Our Internal Audit team follows set policies and processes to acquire information they need to conduct internal investigations of violations of the company codes of conduct, as is standard in companies across our industry.
I can't describe exactly what the internal materials show. But we asked TT and BD a bunch of specific questions about this, including whether the department has ever targeted gov officials, activists, public figures, or journalists. They did not answer. https://www.forbes.com/...
Here they deny specific targets, but don't deny TARGETING. No government, activist, public figures, or journalists targets ... just everyday Americans or other individuals of interest. https://twitter.com/...
First, note this isn't a denial. Just smoke screening with undefined complaints about “rigor” and “integrity” (laughable coming from these constant liars). https://twitter.com/...
TikTok is wildly popular with U.S. military service members, and oh by the way, it's a national security threat. https://qz.com/... https://twitter.com/...
I really hope the CFIUS team working on rules for US PII on TikTok has advisors who have worked at Big Tech. There is vast space of mechanisms to access user PII inside a company and I haven't seen any leaks about the agreement that give me confidence those will be plugged. https…
@klonkitchen Nor does TikTok say here that the Beijing-led group did not aim to use GPS location information to surveil Americans — just that TikTok doesn't use precise GPS. It does use approximate GPS, as it has stated before.
Next, they move the goal post by denying they collect precise “GPS location”; but in the article a TikTok spokesperson admits the app collects “approximate location information based on users' IP addresses.” Again, more word games and hiding the ball. https://twitter.com/...
TikTok appears to remain — despite the claims of its US executives — beholden to its China-based leadership. With each new report, there's further evidence that TikTok's claimed “independence” is illusory. https://www.forbes.com/...
I'd like to understand more on why these people were being surveilled, but, if true, this is up there with the accusations that Uber tracked journalists' locations or Lyft employees tracked rides of romantic partners or celebrities.
I was probably the first human being to email bytedance's privacy office. They didn't even realize at first that they were supposed to respond. And now 3 years on, we're learning how the unique problem of bytedance manifests itself and not clear to me if it's even resolvable. htt…
Forbes is choosing to hold back a lot of information, but its reporting suggests the warnings about TikTok may have been on the money. https://www.forbes.com/...
There's been more smoke than fire around the idea TikTok is a scary Chinese operation against the world. This, apparent evidence that ByteDance wanted to use it to surveil specific Americans, is the most damning to date. https://twitter.com/...
“in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company” It's literal spyware but keep going off about how your addiction to the algorithm is fine. https…
It's clear TikTok is just the arm of the Chinese Communist Party. @GOPoversight has pressed for clarification from the social media company on their data sharing practices. Any failure to cooperate is a serious national security threat. Republicans will hold TikTok accountable. h…
China, broadly, takes a more unconventional and more “whole-of-society” view of information, intelligence & espionage than most models we in the West traditionally imagine. Tik Tok serves their collection models well and shame on us for not cracking down harder on the platform. h…