The US Department of Justice, according to The New York Times, has opened an investigation into Chinese surveillance of American citizens, including several journalists covering the technology industry. ByteDance who owns the application tik tak.

The relevant investigation reportedly began in late 2022 and is reportedly linked to a Chinese company’s admission that its employees had access to the data of US TikTok users, which included two journalists and some of their associates.

The Criminal Investigations Division of the US Department of Justice, the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia are investigating ByteDance, which is based in Beijing and has close ties to the Chinese government, the New York Times notes in a related article.

The ByteDance employees involved, who were later fired, were alleged to have tried to trace the sources of alleged leaks of internal conversations and business documents to reporters. The officials in question gained access to the IP addresses and other data of American journalists through TikTok accounts.

Two of these employees were based in China.

TikTok has announced that it is making changes to how it operates to prevent similar breaches from happening again in the future.

According to the New York Times