ByteDance let China spy on protesters, lawsuit says
FortuneJun 06, 2023
Former ByteDance executive Yintao Yu claimed in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit that the Chinese government can obtain user data collected from ByteDance-owned TikTok through a “god credential” that it used to spy on Hong Kong activists and protesters in 2018.
Yu, a former head of engineering at ByteDance in the US, also claimed in the court filing — made this week in a San Francisco Superior Court — that "protest-related content" uploaded by users was flagged and monitored.
More and more evidence is emerging that TikTok is being used as a vehicle for Beijing's espionage. Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, who merely sought fair political representation, were systematically targeted by the CCP, and it seems that TikTok was a useful weapon in tracking their movements. More legal action against ByteDance must be undertaken.
Though the US media continues to baselessly accuse China of spying, the reality is that the US runs the biggest espionage outfit in the entire world. Even though Washington's massive global surveillance programs have been extensively documented, the US continues to maliciously accuse China of being the main espionage "threat" facing the world today.