US senators want Big Tech in hearings over China firms
washington — Senate Intelligence vice-chairman Mark Warner said he and chairman Richard Burr will soon be calling for a public hearing and hope to get the chief executive officers of Facebook, Alphabet’s Google and Twitter to come answer questions about their companies’ relationships with Chinese telecommunications firms.
Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, asked Alphabet in a letter about its partnerships with device makers Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi, probing whether user data was stored on phones or allowed on the Chinese companies’ servers and how storage agreements were monitored and enforced.
“The possibility of Chinese vendors with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party having access to” interfaces that could give them access to user data from Alphabet subsidiaries “raises serious national security concerns,” Warner wrote. He also sent a similar letter to Twitter.
Lawmakers in the US and elsewhere are increasingly scrutinising big tech companies, particularly over how they collect reams of personal data from their users and what they do with it. Warner said he was happy he wasn’t part of a hearing earlier this year with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, when many senators showed they didn’t know a lot about social media or how the tech companies gather and store private data.
“I think now we’ve got a lot more information,” Warner said. Warner and Burr have previously talked about holding the social media hearing in relation to their probe concerning Russian influence during the presidential election in 2016. But Warner also has asked Google and Twitter if they had similar deals with Chinese technology companies that Facebook has since disclosed. Huawei said it never collected or stored Facebook user data.
Warner also asked Google for information about a partnership with Tencent Holdings, operator of China’s largest social messaging service WeChat. In January, Google and Tencent struck a patent-sharing deal and agreed to team up on developing future technology.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that members of Congress have begun scrutinising part of Google’s Android OS partnership with Huawei.