TikTok national security briefing may have had ‘interesting’ source

A classified TikTok national security briefing given to senators may have been in part based on claims made by a fired member of staff who is now making further … interesting claims.

The former staffer says that his firing was instigated by the US attorney general, and that the FBI and CIA shared his personal information with foreign governments …

TikTok national security briefing

Last month, the House voted overwhelmingly to either ban TikTok from the US, or to force the sale of the app to an American-owned company. President Biden has said that he will sign the order if it passes the Senate and reaches his desk.

Senators had seemed less convinced of the need for the legislation, so the Department of Justice has been pushing the sale option rather than the ban, and the intelligence community has briefed senators on what it says are national security risks.

Those claimed risks were so dramatic that two senators said they should be made public. However, it now appears that one of the sources of the information may be less than reliable.

Fired staffer makes ‘interesting’ claims

Wired reports that a former TikTok staffer claims to have been the source of some of the claims, and points to further claims he makes in a wrongful termination lawsuit.

One former TikTok employee turned whistleblower, who claims to have driven key news reporting and congressional concerns about the app, has now come forward.

Zen Goziker worked at TikTok […] for only six months. He didn’t hold a senior position inside the company.

His lawsuit, and a second one he filed in March against several US government agencies, makes a number of improbable claims. He asserts that he was put under 24-hour surveillance by TikTok and the FBI while working remotely in Mexico. He claims that US attorney general Merrick Garland, director of national intelligence Avril Haines, and other top officials “wickedly instigated” his firing. And he states that the FBI helped the CIA share his private information with foreign governments […]

Goziker shared records with WIRED showing that as he sought to share his concerns about TikTok, he scheduled meetings with officials from the DHS, FBI, and the Tennessee Attorney General’s office. He also purported to have met with staff in the offices of several US senators, including Missouri Republican Josh Hawley, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, and Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Goziker appears to have been the source of a Washington Post story making allegations about the personal data of US TikTok users being passed to China – a claim the company denies.

Photo by Mario Heller on Unsplash