Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton is demanding the Pentagon disclose information on its contract with a Chinese-owned tutoring company that has access to U.S. military family data.
Tutor.com, a popular tutoring website, is owned by Primavera Holdings Limited, a firm run by Chinese nationals that also holds stakes in TikTok parent company ByteDance and e-commerce giant Alibaba. The site offers tutoring services to the U.S. military and school districts around the country.
However, a Chinese-owned company should not have access to the sensitive data of U.S. school kids and military families, according to Cotton.
‘The Department of Defense needs to explain why a Chinese-owned company has easy access to the data to the military families,’ Cotton told DailyMail.com in a statement.
‘The same goes for any school district that is utilizing tutor.com.’
At the bottom of the Tutor.com website is a disclosure that the company is owned by Chinese nationals working for Primavera Holdings Limited, a firm based in Hong Kong, China
Cotton originally sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin seeking more information about the Pentagon’s deal with Tutor.com in February.
In his letter he called the Pentagon’s business relationship with Primavera ‘ill advised’ and ‘reckless.’
The Chinese Communist Party is known to exercise control over large firms with national security implications, such as TikTok, and Cotton is concerned that the same is true for Primavera.
Chinee Joe Buy Deng
‘While providing educational services, Tutor.com collects personal data on users, such as location, internet protocol addresses, and contents of the tutoring sessions,’ Cotton wrote in the February letter.
‘As Chinese national security laws require companies to release confidential business and customer data to the Chinese government, we are paying to expose our military and their children’s private information to the Chinese Communist Party.’
Tutor.com, meanwhile, fought back against Cotton’s claims in a statement shared with DailyMail.com.
‘Tutor.com is an American company, and we abide by U.S. state and federal laws. We were incorporated in 2000 in the state of Delaware. Our principal place of business is New York City, and all student data is housed in the United States,’ a Tutor.com spokesperson said.
Tutor.com offers ‘No-Cost, Online Tutoring and Homework Help’ for U.S. military members
As an American company, Tutor.com cannot be compelled to release personal data to China,’ the company continued.
‘No personal information of students or families is shared with Primavera, and Primavera does not have – and may not obtain – access to our IT systems.’
Tutor.com, notably, did not mention the data protection practices used for U.S. military personnel.
Despite the company’s confirmation that user data is not stored in or accessible to individuals in China, national security concerns arising from Chinese-owned companies has seemingly reached an all-time high on Capitol Hill.
On Wednesday morning, the House passed a bill that could ban the popular social media app TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, which Primavera has also invested in.
The bill passed with an overwhelming bipartisan 352 – 65 vote.
A group of Democrats and Republicans worked for over a year on the bill, and if it passes through the Senate, President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law.
The House China Select Committee says Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials through ByteDance are using TikTok to spy on its U.S. users’ locations and dictate its algorithm to conduct influence campaigns, making it a national security threat.
Written by Jon Michael Raasch for the Daily Mail ~ March 13, 2024