Breaking: Incoming House Committee Chairs Accuse TikTok of Lying to Congress

- November 22, 2022

Two senior Republican lawmakers are accusing TikTok of making potentially false statements to Congress about its reported plans to monitor the locations of specific American users, National Review has learned. If, as expected, the two lawmakers become the chairs of their respective committees in January, they will have enhanced powers to investigate TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, over their ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

In a letter addressed today to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and obtained by NR, Representatives James Comer (the presumptive next chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (the presumptive next chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee) asked that the company preserve documents and electronic records pertaining to certain sensitive practices allegedly undertaken by TikTok and ByteDance. Following a recent report that TikTok planned to track specific U.S. users' locations, the lawmakers are accusing the company of lying. "The social-media company is either misleading or providing false information to Congress about its data-sharing and privacy practices," Comer told NR. "Under no circumstances should Americans' private data be in the hands of the CCP."

As detailed in the letter, the allegation made by Comer and McMorris Rodgers stems from a briefing that TikTok made to a bipartisan group of congressional staffers on September 7. Specifically, the lawmakers cited new evidence that contradicted two assertions the company's employees made during that briefing: that TikTok doesn't track its users' online activity when the app is not open, and that employees in China cannot access specific U.S. users' locations.

Weeks after the briefing, in late September, Consumer Reports revealed that TikTok receives data on people who visit hundreds of organizations' websites, including those with ".gov," ".edu," and ".org" domains, via trackers called pixels. The Consumer Reports analysis found that the data that go to TikTok can include a user's IP address, as well as what that user clicks on and types. In a statement to Consumer Reports, TikTok had claimed that it uses the practice, which other tech companies also use, exclusively for advertising.

On the heels of the Consumer Reports story, last month, Forbes reported that a ByteDance team in China had planned to use the data TikTok collected to track the physical locations of specific U.S. users and thus "surveil individual American citizens," rather than using it exclusively for purposes of targeted advertising. Although Forbes could not confirm whether those plans were carried out, their existence undermines previous claims that TikTok has made about its data-privacy practices. The company's communications team subsequently assailed the Forbes report in a Twitter thread, stating that "TikTok does not collect precise GPS location information," seeming only to refute one specific allegation that the Forbes story did not make.

In their letter, Comer and McMorris Rodgers asked TikTok to provide them all drafts of a potential deal with the Biden administration that would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S., in addition to all records regarding TikTok's use of pixels and ByteDance's plans to monitor specific Americans. They also requested that TikTok provide all of the documents they asked for in a July 14 letter, including those outlining the corporate relationship between TikTok and ByteDance, communications between the two entities, and evidence that TikTok does indeed use "robust cybersecurity controls" to protect U.S. users' data. Although the September 7 briefing was a response to the July letter, TikTok has not otherwise provided the previously requested records.

TikTok did not respond to NR's request for comment on today's letter from Comer and McMorris Rodgers.

The letter comes at a pivotal time for TikTok, as a Republican House majority prepares to launch a series of investigations in January, the Biden administration reportedly approaches the conclusion of the deal that would allow the Chinese company to continue to operate in the United States, bipartisan concern about the app deepens, and support grows for legislation that would ban it from the American market.

Indeed, Comer and McMorris Rodgers are not the first lawmakers to accuse TikTok of deliberately misleading Congress. This past summer, Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio — the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, respectively — wrote in a letter to FTC chairwoman Lina Khan that "TikTok has also misrepresented its corporate governance practice, including to Congressional committees such as ours."

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday last week, Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said that Donald Trump had been right to try to ban TikTok and that the app is a "broadcasting network" reliant on the Chinese Communist Party.

Starting in January, House Republican lawmakers are highly likely to use their subpoena power to more closely scrutinize TikTok's alleged misrepresentations.

"Congress and the American people need answers," Comer told NR. "In the 118th Congress, Republicans on the Oversight and Energy and Commerce Committees will work together to hold TikTok accountable for their concerning data practices."