(TWN) - ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, has been charged with enabling members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to the information of Hong Kong human rights activists and demonstrators.

Former ByteDance executive Yintao Yu claims in a US court filing that users who submitted "protest-related content" were also recognized and monitored.
According to Mr Yu, CCP members were also able to obtain US TikTok user data.A spokesman for ByteDance refuted the charges, calling them "baseless."

The charges are disclosed in a San Francisco Superior Court filing this week as part of Mr Yu's lawsuit.  Mr Yu said in the filing that members of a CCP committee had access to a "superuser" credential, also known as a "god user," that allowed them to view all data acquired by ByteDance.

He further claimed that the committee members were not ByteDance employees but were present at the company's Beijing headquarters.

This was widespread awareness among senior executives, according to Mr Yu, who worked as the head of engineering for ByteDance in the United States for around a year beginning in August 2017.

According to the petition, CCP committee members utilized their "god credential" in 2018 to "identify and locate Hong Kong protesters, civil rights activists, and protest supporters."

In 2014, Hong Kong witnessed massive protests known as the Umbrella Movement. Following it, civil rights activists staged smaller protests. Much of this public opposition has vanished after Beijing cracked down with a severe national security law in the aftermath of the anti-government protests in 2019.