Chinese Communist Party members used a ¡°god credential¡± at TikTok parent ByteDance to examine the personal data of civil rights activists and protesters in Hong Kong in order to identify and track them down, a former company executive said in a court filing.
Yintao ¡°Roger¡± Yu, a former head of engineering in the U.S. for ByteDance, described a special committee of the Chinese government installed at the company¡¯s Beijing offices that he said monitored all data on the platform, including that of users in the U.S., according to the filing.
¡°This was a backdoor to any barrier ByteDance had supposedly installed to protect data from the Chinese Communist Party¡¯s surveillance,¡± according to the filing in state court in San Francisco. The party¡¯s ¡°superuser credential,¡± also known as a ¡°god credential,¡± was ¡°commonly discussed between employees at various levels of the company, including senior executives,¡± Yu said.
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