TikTok confirmed that China-based employees of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have access to US user data under certain circumstances in a letter obtained by The New York Times responding to nine Republican senators’ inquiries about the matter. “Employees outside the US, including China-based employees, can have access to TikTok US user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by our US-based security team,” TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew wrote in the letter. “TikTok has an internal data classification system and approval process in place that assigns levels of access based on the…