U.S. Congress Turns Its Attention to Google After Facebook over Huawei Spying Issue

After it was finished looking into Facebook over potential national security issues that it may be involved in, Congress has now turned its attention to Google. Some of the key issues that will be tackled are the search engine giant’s relationship with Huawei and whether or not it provided the electronics maker with user data that can be used for Chinese espionage.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, this new development is yet another stage in the escalating cold war that the U.S. seems to be waging against China on the digital front. Fears of spying by China have led to everything from Huawei getting blocked from partnering with major U.S. carriers to banning ZTE from getting supplies from American manufacturers.

In the case of Google, the point that lawmakers have taken interest in is the matter of the deal that it made with Huawei in order to upgrade the capabilities of its smartphones. The company’s devices run on the Android OS, which is owned by Google.

What the lawmakers want to look into is the possibility that the search engine giant might have shared information, such as text messages and other private user data, with the Chinese firm. In fact, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) recently sent a letter to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in order to ascertain exactly how much access to the data of its users it had provided these companies.

In response, a spokesperson for the Silicon Valley firm said that Google had agreements with multiple companies, not just the ones that Sen. Warner brought up, The Washington Post reports. Special access to the data that Google gathered from its users is also apparently not provided.

“We do not provide special access to Google user data as part of these agreements, and our agreements include privacy and security protections for user data,” the spokesperson said.