Although he does not hold a senior position, Goziker claimed that his main job at TikTok was to “oversee” the Texas program to ensure that the social media app’s plans to protect U.S. user data were effective. The goal is to implement a set of safeguards that meet the requirements of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the interagency agency charged with assessing national security risks associated with foreign acquisitions or holdings of major equity interests in U.S. companies. CFIUS, which has the power to force companies to unwind deals it deems risky, has been investigating ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of a lip-syncing app called Musical.ly since 2019, which was later merged into TikTok.
Gozik claimed he interviewed more than three dozen people at TikTok and ByteDance about the Texas project, according to court documents. He said he discovered flaws in the plan that led him to refuse to “sign off” on it despite alleged pressure from his manager and other company executives. Court records show that Gorzik attempted to express his concerns to TikTok’s top leadership, including the CEO and board of directors.
Goziker claimed in court documents that he found evidence that TikTok’s software could send data to China in January 2022, weeks before he was fired. He claims in the filing that through “collaboration and deliberate joint efforts with ByteDance engineers from mainland China” he obtained “verified artifacts” in TikTok’s software that connects the platform to Toutiao , a popular Chinese news aggregation app owned by ByteDance. Goziker said his findings indicate that U.S. data from TikTok may still be flowing to the People’s Republic of China, despite TikTok’s claims to the contrary. The document contains no detailed documentary evidence of his accusations.
last march Gozik’s claims appeared two weeks later Washington post, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress and was questioned about his app’s ties to China. Subsequently, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers each sent TikTok questions about the comments made in TikTok. postal story.
TikTok responded that many of the accusations in the article were baseless. References to Toutiao in TikTok’s code “do not in any way indicate an association, integration or network connection between Toutiao and TikTok,” the statement said, adding that “once Project Texas is launched, the Toutiao app cannot interfere with TikTok data stream”. fully. “
In lawsuits and email records reviewed by WIRED, Goziker revealed that he was also in contact with a reporter for Forbes who has written many influential stories about TikTok’s data security practices as well as ByteDance’s Bumping links. In June 2022, while this reporter was working at BuzzFeed News, they published an article based on 80 internal meetings at TikTok, in which nine different employees reportedly made statements “indicating that engineers in China were U.S. data will be accessible until January 2022. ”
Gorzik claimed to Wired that he was the source of the recordings. Forbes told Wired it does not comment on sources.
Senator Warner and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, later cited the BuzzFeed report in a letter urging the FTC to open an investigation into TikTok. Politico reported this month that the agency responded to the call and began investigating whether the app “deceived users by denying Chinese individuals access to their data.”
When Gorzik filed his lawsuit, U.S. lawmakers were closer than ever to banning the app. The U.S. House of Representatives last month approved a bill forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months, after which the app will be banned from U.S. app stores. The bill is currently before the Senate, and President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law.
Update April 4, 2024, 6:15 pm ET: The House of Representatives passed a bill forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok by an absolute majority, but not unanimously.