More than 30 TikTok and ByteDance employees were questioned by US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) upon entering the country. Most of them are Chinese citizens.
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As Forbes USA reports citing sources, some of those questioned work in the field of machine learning and data engineering. CBP agents asked them about access to TikTok user data in the United States and the location of data centers in the United States.
Questions also focused on Project Texas, the company’s massive corporate restructuring project that aims to keep American user data away from ByteDance workers in China.
A CBP spokeswoman explained that all international travelers entering the United States, including U.S. citizens, are subject to questioning.
However, a source told Forbes that CBP agents have a “special printed list of questions” to question TikTok and ByteDance employees. These include personal questions, for example, about membership in the Chinese Communist Party, education, and political connections in the People’s Republic of China.
Last week, US President Joe Biden signed a law that will ban TikTok in the country unless ByteDance sells its US business within 270 days. US authorities are concerned about the security of US users’ data received by a Chinese app.
Photo: Rebekah Zemansky / Shutterstock
Author:
Akhmed Sadulayev
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
