China’s Communist Party had “supreme access” to all data held by TikTok’s parent company Bytedance, including on servers in the United States, according to a former employer. Yintao “Roger” Yu says he worked at the company from August 2017 to November 2018, as a head of engineering for US operations. He filed a lawsuit of wrongful termination against Bytedance in Superior Court earlier this month. Yu’s lawsuit alleges that the company made global user data accessible to China’s Communist Party via a backdoor channel. Yu also claimed that Bytedance was able to share, elevate or even remove content, per their wishes. He described the company as a “useful propaganda tool” for Beijing’s leaders. A Bytedance spokesperson has denied Yu’s allegations, calling them “baseless”. The lawsuit comes amid ongoing scrutiny of TikTok and the role of the Chinese state on the platform's data.