TikTok said on Friday it is moving U.S. users’ data to Oracle servers stored in the United States. Overshadowing its migration announcement was a damning report that followed, claiming that TikTok staff in China had access to its U.S. users’ data as recently as this January.

The report from BuzzFeed News, which cites recordings from 80 TikTok internal meetings it obtained, claims that U.S. employees of TikTok repeatedly consulted with their colleagues in China to understand how U.S. user data flowed because they did not have the “permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own.”

“Everything is seen in China,” the report said, quoting an unnamed member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department as saying in a September 2021 meeting.

The report further casts doubt on the short video giant’s entanglement with Beijing, a long-running accusation amplified by former President Donald Trump, and the firm’s public comments about the independence of its U.S. unit.

U.S. officials have for years expressed concern that TikTok might let China’s authoritarian government have access to the data the firm collects from Americans and users from other nations. The matter escalated in September 2020, when the Trump administration said it would bar the Chinese-owned mobile apps WeChat and TikTok from U.S. app stores.

(India banned TikTok and several other Chinese-owned apps in 2020 citing national security concerns.)

TikTok -- as well as its parent firm ByteDance -- has publicly said it would never hand over U.S. users' data. The firm also engaged with Microsoft and Oracle to sell the U.S. unit and explored selling stakes to U.S. investors to comply with Trump's order.

The Biden administration revoked the Trump-era executive order and replaced it with one that called for a broader review of a number of foreign-controlled apps that could pose a security threat to Americans and their data.

TikTok said in a blog post Friday that "100% of U.S. user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure" in the United States, with an asterisk. "We still use our U.S. and Singapore data centers for backup, but as we continue our work we expect to delete U.S. users' private data from our own data centers and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S.”

A report in March said the two firms were said to be close to finalizing a deal.

TikTok said Friday it is also “making operational changes,” including establishing a U.S.-based leadership to “solely manage U.S. user data for TikTok.”

“These are critical steps, but there is more we can do. We know we are among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data,” it added.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on BuzzFeed News’ reporting.

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Leaked audio obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals that China-based engineers for TikTok's parent company had access to US data for months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “forced on us” after a 90-minute delay due to a cyberattack. Putin said that his invasion of neighboring Ukraine in late February was “the decision of a sovereign country that has an…

STORY: Russian President Vladimir Putin told the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on Friday (June 17) that Moscow would continue to develop as an "open economy" despite unprecedented Western sanctions imposed after it sent forces into neighboring Ukraine.Putin added that a sanctions "blitzkrieg" against Moscow had never had any chance of succeeding.Western allies led by the European Union and the United States have imposed the most severe economic sanctions that any nation has faced in modern history since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine on February 24.

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“I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them,” said an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers.View Entire Post ›

STORY: "We're going to fight this. We're going to use every appeal avenue," she told reporters."I'm going to spend every waking hour fighting for Julian until he is free, until justice is served."British interior minister Priti Patel on Friday approved the extradition of Assange to the United States to face criminal charges, bringing his long-running legal saga closer to a conclusion.Assange is wanted by U.S. authorities on 18 counts, including a spying charge, relating to WikiLeaks' release of vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables which Washington said had put lives in danger.His supporters say he is an anti-establishment hero who has been victimised because he exposed U.S. wrongdoing in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that his prosecution is a politically motivated assault on journalism and free speech.Originally, a British judge ruled that Assange should not be deported, saying his mental health meant he would be at risk of suicide if convicted and held in a maximum security prison.But this was overturned on an appeal after the United States gave a package of assurances, including a pledge he could be transferred to Australia to serve any sentence.Patel's decision does not mean the end of Australian-born Assange's legal fight which has been going on for more than a decade and could continue for many more months.Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson told Reuters his case would be taken to the European Court of Human Rights if the appeal was not successful in the UK.

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TikTok said it has completed migrating information on its U.S. users to servers at Oracle Corp, in a move that could address U.S. regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular short video app. The move, which was first reported by Reuters, comes nearly two years after a U.S. national security panel ordered parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that U.S. user data could be passed on to China's communist government. TikTok is one of the world's most popular social media apps, with more than 1 billion active users globally, and counts the U.S. as its largest market.

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