WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department is moving to further crackdown on China Telecom's U.S. unit from over concerns it could exploit access to American data through their U.S. cloud and internet businesses by providing it to Beijing, a source told Reuters.

The source confirmed a New York Times report that the department last week sent China Telecom Americas a preliminary determination that its presence in U.S. networks and cloud services poses U.S. national security risks and gave the company 30 days to respond.