Tiktok Reportedly Has Over 130 CCP Member Employees But CIA Says There's No Evidence Yet

Jamie P., Tech Times 08 August 2020, 05:08 am

On Thursday, Aug. 6, the United States President Donald Trump signs Executive Order giving banned status on the Chinese app, TikTok. The signed document accused the app of getting users' info to sell out to the Communist Party of China (CCP). A day after this, an exclusive report was released saying over 130 employees of ByteDance were members of the CCP.

TikTok employees were CCP members?

The TikTok ban issue has not yet ended. In fact, it has gotten worse. The company behind it, called ByteDance, only has 45 day-deadline in order to make amends with its partners in the United States before it gets thrown out.

"This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information - potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage," the order said.

Tech Times reported that the Chinese company is now forced to take legal action against America to stop the said ban. However, an exclusive report from The Epoch Times may pause the trial.

Allegedly, the report told us that TikTok was a China-controlled media. It turns out, exactly at least 138 TikTok employees were alleged members of the Communist Party of China (CCP).

As reported by The Epoch Times, there's a leaked set of documents from the company, showing names of the ByteDance employees that were also members of the governing political party of the People's Republic of China.

At least 60 from the list are currently holding high-rank positions in the company. The document shows the names, positions, ID numbers, and the date they were enlisted to become members of the governing party, according to The Epoch Times.

As of now, ByteDance has not yet commented over the leaked documents.

However, James Carafano, vice president of The Heritage Foundation's Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, warned that the app was after all a Chinese-owned medium. He explains that the CCP membership of employees in a Chinese company is a normal business move.

"It's a Chinese-owned company," he said. "You have no confidence in the software. You have no confidence in their handling of data. And you have no confidence that they're independent of Chinese direction."

CIA says 'no evidence' so far on China-infiltration on ByteDance

On the other hand, the country's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) states otherwise. According to the New York Times, the CIA clearly states that 'no evidence' is discovered that proves that TikTok nor ByteDance has obtained data from its users.

Here's a clarification, though. The statement of the CIA saying that TikTok does not steal data from its users is not a basis to say that the app is safe to use, according to the report.