reporter, and company employees, the email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen said.
Congress is set to pass legislation this week to ban US government employees from downloading or using TikTok on their government-owned devices and more than a dozen governors have barred state employees from using TikTok on state-owned devices. Forbes reported Thursday ByteDance had tracked multiple Forbes journalists including some who formerly worked at BuzzFeed “as part of a covert surveillance campaign” aimed at discovering the source of leaks. Randall Lane, the chief content officer of Forbes, called it “a direct assault on the idea of a free press and its critical role in a functioning democracy”.
Chew said that over the past 15 months the company had been working to build TikTok USData Security to ensure protected TikTok US user data stays in the United States.