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The Biden administration has recently ramped up pressure on TikTok<\/a> over national security concerns stemming from its ties to China, and apparently the Justice Department and the FBI are also applying pressure of their own.<\/p>\n Forbes<\/a> first reported that the agencies are actively investigating ByteDance, TikTok\u2019s parent company. The investigation was reportedly initiated after some employees leveraged the app<\/a> to spy on U.S.-based journalists \u2014 an incident corroborated by an internal investigation<\/a> late last year.<\/p>\n Now, The New York Times<\/a> and other outlets have matched Forbes\u2019 reporting, confirming that the Fraud Section of the Justice Department\u2019s Criminal Division is coordinating with the FBI and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to investigate the breach of user privacy.<\/p>\n In the internal investigation, ByteDance found that some employees accessed data on American journalists\u2019 TikTok accounts in order to investigate who at the company was leaking information to reporters. Of employees involved in the incident \u2014 who were fired after the fact \u2014 two were part of the company\u2019s operations in China.<\/p>\n The latest revelations come a week before TikTok\u2019s CEO is scheduled to testify before Congress \u2014 an appearance that\u2019s likely to be met with deep suspicion<\/a>, even by tech hearing standards. In the days leading up to the hearing, the Biden administration has stiffened its posture toward the company considerably, threatening to ban the app<\/a> in the U.S. if TikTok\u2019s Chinese owners don\u2019t sell the company.<\/p>\n TikTok rebuffed the White House\u2019s new demand for divestiture, arguing that selling the company won\u2019t address the government\u2019s concerns. TikTok pointed to its own proposed solution instead, though convincing the U.S. government that a China-based company operating in the U.S. should be allowed to self-regulate is a difficult sell. To mitigate concerns about the app\u2019s relationship with China, TikTok launched a $1.5 billion initiative known as \u201cProject Texas\u201d that would store U.S. user data domestically and subject the company to an auditing process conducted by American tech giant Oracle.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n