TikTok's access controls on U.S. user data are much weaker than the company says, a former ByteDance employee told the office of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), per a letter from Hawley to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen shared exclusively with Axios.

Driving the news: The whistleblower's allegations, which have not been independently seen or verified by Axios, suggest that TikTok overstates its separation from its China-based owner ByteDance, relies on proprietary Chinese software that could have backdoors, and uses tools that allow employees to easily toggle between U.S. and Chinese user data.

What they're saying: "This whistleblower’s allegations are deeply concerning. They also appear to contradict public statements made by TikTok and ByteDance executives," Hawley writes.

• He cites Congressional testimony from last September by TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas stating "there are strict access controls around the data that is accessed in the United States," along with reporting from Forbes and Reuters about Bytedance employees improperly accessing TikTok's U.S. user data.
• Hawley writes: "The whistleblower describes TikTok’s access controls on U.S. data as 'superficial' at best, where they exist at all. As an example, he describes how TikTok and ByteDance employees — including members of the Chinese Communist Party known to be on ByteDance’s payroll — can switch between Chinese and U.S. data with nothing more than the click of a button using a proprietary tool called Dorado... In...

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