Senators Want an Update on TikTok's US Security Review

Six Republican senators questioned US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday about the Biden administration's ongoing national security review of social media platform TikTok. Because of concerns that US user data could be passed on to China's communist government, the US government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks, ordered Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok in 2020.

TikTok announced last week that it had completed the migration of information on its US users to Oracle Corp servers in order to address US concerns about data integrity.

Senators Tom Cotton, Ben Sasse, Mike Braun, Marco Rubio, Todd Young and Roger Wicker asked Yellen numerous questions saying the administration "has seemingly done nothing to enforce" the August 2020 divestiture order." They noted, "the results of the security reviews, likewise, have not been publicly released after one year."

The senators want to know "will TikTok be locally managed in the United States?" and "Will the U.S. government have the ability to routinely access and inspect the algorithm's source code?" It also asks "what assurances does the U.S. government have that TikTok will store U.S. data and adopt privacy policies with adequate protections?"