Breaking down TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before House lawmakers amid privacy concerns

tick tock's CEO getting grilled bylawmakers on the hill defending his appTick Tock they're defending his app ticktalk rather as Congress floats the ideaof banning it lawmakers addressingsecurity spying even suicide as Jose Chutells Congress his company is working toprotect user data this comes as thepopular app and its parent companyChinese owned bite dance are underintense scrutiny for its use and allegedabuse of user dataour approach has never been to dismissor trivialize any of these concerns wehave addressed them with real actionnow that's what we've been doing for thelast two years building what amounts toa firewall the seals of protected U.Suser data from unauthorized foreignaccessthe bottom line is thisAmerican data stored on American soil byan American company overseen by AmericanpersonnelRJ O'Brien is on the hill there takingit all in so Jay how is show doing sofar you think well he's got to convincelawmakers on this committee andlawmakers across Capitol Hill that TickTock is a safe app their concerns aretwofold one is over data privacy thefact that Tick Tock is an app that'sowned by a Chinese company and collectsa lot of user data and alsomisinformation the notion that ticktock's algorithm could promote ordownplay videos that the Chinesegovernment doesn't like Tick Tock deniesall of that but we heard from lawmakersin both parties in this committee rarebipartisan agreement that they are notbuying a lot of tick tocks explanationshere one point that's worth under thatunderscores all of this is an exchangebetween Tick Tock CEO shochu and Annaeschu Democrat of California shochu saysin essence that Tick Tock employeesdon't have access to user data anddoesn't know of any instance in whichthey would share that with the Chinesegovernment and Anna issue in the directquote is calls that Preposterous so thatis the environment that all of this isplaying out in that hearing as you'relooking at on your screen resuming nowafter a recess show True trying to showlawmakers that he believes Tick Tock isa secure app and bipartisan agreementexceed it seems from a lot of members ofthis committee that they are just notbuying that Kira right and just when youheard the examples that were brought upI mean talking about suicide in ourchildren and the bullying and all thethings that you know we have beencovering stories on right that have beentied to Tick-Tock you've also had thesetick talkers and influencers who are onthe hill for the hearing as wellsticking to their free speech argumentyeah tick tockers are in that hearingroom right now they came to the hillyesterday this is part of a largereffort from Tick Tock to push lawmakersagainst Banning their app a lot of thesetick-tockers telling us and tellinglawmakers yesterday when they werelobbying that this app is beloved tothem it changed their lives here's whata few of them said to usto preemptively try toban an app that means so much to so manypeopleum there's a disconnect there these arereal American livesthat you're not listening to that you'renot seeing you're not seeing me you'renot seeing my value and what I bring tothis to this country so I'm asking ourpoliticians don't take away thecommunity that we've all builta community that laughs that loves andsupports each other in a way thatnothing else can we can solve the issueswithout taking away something soprecious to us allat one point we were talking with atick-tocker in view of the capital Domeand she turned around and she shouted atthe Capitol as if shouting to lawmakersdon't be afraid but the fact of thematter is there are a lot of lawmakerswho are afraid of tick-tock afraid aboutits connections to the Chinese Communistparty they are still pushing Tick TockCEO on that trying to draw in thishearing linkages between Tick Tock itsparent company bite dance and theChinese Communist party so we're goingto watch that play out over the courseof the day Kira so let me ask you aquestion because we heard frominfluencers and and those that supportthe tick tock Community Jay right butthey they didn't give any specifics I Iheard them say it's you know it allowspeople to see my community it it is apositive thing for our community butwhat it is what is it exactly they thinkoverrides the concerns that are beingdiscussed it's interesting because whenyou talk to some of these influencerssome of them that we spoke with theyacknowledge the concern is securityconcerns about Tick Tock they say thatthose security concerns persist acrosssocial media and to a degree they'reright but there are no wide scale socialmedia companies that are owned by aChinese company like Tick Tock is TickTock for its part is trying to quellthose concerns in part on data byWalling off U.S user data in Texas theycall it project Texas it's going to beon Oracle servers in Texas but stillthere is existing U.S user data that'sstored overseas disease Tick Tock saysthat data is not accessible to employeesin China but lawmakers said today againthat they're not buying that onmisinformation China is presentingassurances to lawmakers that no foreigncountry has influence over tick tock'salgorithm over the videos it picks forits users and puts it their top of theirfor you page but again in this hearing alot of lawmakers saying they just don'tbuy that either Kira so there's a highbar that Tick Tock needs to clear toconvince these members of Congress thatit's safe and right now what we'reseeing play out in this hearing is thatfor the vast majority of lawmakers TickTock has not met that thresholdwell it's going to be interesting to seeif that can even become a reality thatlawmakers actually ban are able to banTick Tock in the U.S Jay we will keepchecking in thank you so much let's talkmore about this though and bring inJavid Ali former senior director for theNational Security Council ofcounterterrorism Center also servedunder the Trump Administration so Javawhat do you think do you believe ticktock's CEO here and and that his companyisn't sharing data with China with theCommunist Partywell Kerry I'm great to be with you thisafternoon so um there definitely is alot of skepticism right now on the hilldespite uh the claims from The Tick TockCEO about these um steps or actions thatthe company has taken to uh to minimizethe risk but I uh have been listening tothe voices of my uh former sort oforganizations that I work for uh likethe director of the FBI the Secretary ofHomeland Security I mean these are thevoices at the in the executive branchum saying that there there is a risk tohaving tick tock on your phone or yourdevice and that risk is probably somecompromise of the data and there I wouldalso have to think that there's someintelligence that that they have orthey've been able to glean that sort ofsuggests that this concern isn't just apolitical one coming from folks like thedirector of the FBI or the Secretary ofHomeland Security so as these hearingsunfold I think it's going to get evenmore contentious in terms of thepushback that the member is going togive us thewell it's interesting job Ed becauseTick Tock CEO said in the hearing thatTick Tock is saving all of its data in aserver Farm in Texas so does thatconcern you and if so whywell that may be tick tock's way ofsaying that and I think your clipearlier said that uh The Tick Tock CEOsaid there was a firewall and in theirmind thinking that okay the server isphysically located in Texas and the datais stored there but as we all know froma cyber security perspective thatdoesn't mean that the data can't bebreached or it can't be siphoned off oruh or quietlyum you know moved hacked to anotherserver off offshore so even with thephysical server that in and of itselfdoesn't create the level of securitythat probably lawmakers would like oreven folks within the intelligenceCommunity or and intelligence Communityor within the homeland security worldso what can a third party like Chinaactually track and and what do wealready know that they are indeedtrackingwell China has engaged in amulti-faceted multi-prong Espionageum campaign against the United Statesfor years if not decades uh probablygoing back even uh to the the mid 90sandif you look at individual operationsthat the Chinese government or thirdparties linked to the Chinese governmentuh have have conducted theseintelligenceum uh sort of breakthroughs that thatthey've um that they've gained have beenpretty significant one is in 2015 uh uhsort of a team hacked the office ofpersonnel management and stole millionsof records of folks who had securityclearances I was included in that batchof people who had their securityclearance informationum pilford by the by the Chinesegovernment in 2021 we had a MicrosoftExchange pack that went throughthousands of servers and the the Chinesegovernment was also responsible for thatand then just if you remember a fewmonths ago we had the balloon incidentwhich was different than a cyber relatedum you know level of Espionage but thatwas more physical surveillance so we'veseen China time and time again launchthese sophisticated and aggressiveintelligence collection operationsagainst the United States and that iswhere where this concern from Tick Tockis coming from it's not just a one-offincident it's it's based on a abackstory of a number of differentoperations the Chinese have conducted socan you say yes or no because we have towrap should Tick Tock be banned in theU.S do you have a strong feeling yes ornoI would say no and I personally do nothave Tick Tock in any of my devicesall right Javed Ali with your experiencewe appreciate your context and insightthank you so muchthank you hi everyone GeorgeStephanopoulos here thanks for checkingout the ABC News YouTube channel ifyou'd like to get more videos showhighlights and watch live event coverageclick on the right over here tosubscribe to our Channel and don'tforget to download the ABC News app forbreaking news alerts thanks for watching