'President Trump was right': Va. Senator Mark Warner sounds alarm on TikTok

WASHINGTON, D.C. (7News) — Top lawmakers on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are urging the Federal Trade Commission to formally investigate TikTok and its parent company.

“Like so many of these social media platforms, there's a good positive side, but there is a dark underbelly if exploited," Virginia U.S. Senator Mark Warner told 7News.

U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio are sounding yet another alarm on TikTok.

“TikTok is controlled by a Chinese company, Bytedance," said Warner. "Chinese law requires that any company in China owes its first allegiance to the Communist Party of China, not to the shareholders. They literally have to turn over data if it's required.”

“There's been an investigation that has shown repeated situations where Chinese engineers are getting access to this data and this raises not only privacy concerns, it raises security concerns," said Warner. "In the world of artificial intelligence, the enterprises that have the most data win and China has been whether through hacking like Equifax or breaking into the files of all our federal employees with the OPM hack a number of years ago, they keep trying to accumulate this data."

That despite TikTok’s previous claims that the company’s operations were firewalled from demands of the Chinese Communist Party.

“This was one where President Trump was right," said Warner. "There was a challenge withTikTok and it has been one of the fastest growing companies in the whole world. And President Trump was right on this with it. This was a security threat. It was a privacy threat.”

Which is concerning for all TikTok users, including kids, Senator Warner warns.

“The idea that those videos could be held and potentially used as a way to blackmail individuals, there are a whole series of very negative repercussions," said Warner. "So the Intelligence Committee, Senator Rubio and I in a bipartisan way have asked the Federal Trade Commission to use their power called Section Five to investigate what there's clearly a deceptive practice. And there are ways they can put in place a remedy that would give us better protection."

Last week, TikTok responded to the Senators insisting data isn’t shared with the Chinese government.

“I am not assured at all," Warner said. "It's one of the reasons why we need in this country a national data privacy legislation. We're behind the Europeans."

Warner is calling on people to speak out and be careful with what you share on TikTok.

“Weigh in with the FTC," Warner told 7News. "Let's stop these deceptive practices.Let's put better privacy protections in place to make sure that they, TikTok for example, shouldn't be able to collect biometric information about its users. Maybe they shouldn't be able to hold on to these videos, literally for years. If we don't get a remedy, though, I think people need to reconsider their usage of this platform."