US senators have reportedly questioned the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after evidence suggests the department's employees still access TikTok, a clear violation of the government's ban for the Bytedance-owned application on federal devices.
As per Tech Crunch, a letter made public today was sent to the IRS by both U.S. Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). They argue that TikTok's data collection techniques may have compromised the secret nature of taxpayer data and forced the IRS to reply to questions about why the restriction is not being upheld.
As per the investigation made by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), over 2,800 mobile devices used by IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) employees and PCs assigned to CI employees can supposedly access TikTok.
The IRS is then demanded to reply to the number of inquiries by February 8, 2024. These include, among other things, the number of IRS employees who use their own devices, the proportion of those who use those devices for TikTok access using the same devices they use for IRS-related tasks, and the security procedures IRS employees must adhere to to safeguard taxpayer data.
IRS' Non-Compliance
TIGTA revealed that the IRS has not revised the rules about the "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) initiative, which permits IRS employees to use their devices for work-related activities. IRS employees were stated to have never been informed that TikTok was prohibited from being used on personal devices that simultaneously accessed sensitive, work-related data via the BYOD program without revising the BYOD standards.
The letter also claimed that the IRS refuses to update the BYOD program policies until October 2024 and is not following the TIGTA suggestion to prohibit access to TikTok on the department's employees' devices.
TikTok Remains a Risk
The letter follows after the Wall Street Journal reported that despite the operation code-named "Project Texas" that TikTok performed to retain U.S. user data on Oracle servers in the states, TikTok staff still occasionally shares data with its China-based parent business ByteDance.
The campaign aimed to persuade the American government that user data was secure in the country. Instead, the reports state that TikTok supervisors occasionally instructed staff members to share information with third parties through unofficial channels, including private information like a user's IP address, email address, or birthdate.
Congress reportedly continues to look more closely at TikTok because of its parent company's connections to the Chinese government. Although its CEO, who was called before Congress in March of last year, stated that the company has never given China access to the data of its American users, this has not done much to allay lawmakers' fears that the app poses a threat to national security.
Although there is a legislative drive to remove the app from phones nationwide, the federal prohibition, backed by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), only applies to government devices.
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