A House committee advanced a bill on Thursday that could lead to a nationwide ban against TikTok on all electronic devices, renewing lawmakers’ challenge to one of the world’s most popular social media apps and highlighting unresolved fears that TikTok may pose a Chinese government spying risk.
via: CBS News
Owned by the China-based company ByteDance, TikTok is one of the most widely used apps in the U.S., with more than 150 million monthly users. Its meteoric rise over the past several years has been accompanied by warnings from national security officials and lawmakers that China’s communist government could gain access to its vast trove of data and use that information to spy on Americans.
While previous proposals to ban the app have largely stalled or run into legal issues, the latest push seems to be gaining steam among lawmakers and in the White House.
The 12-page bill, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, aims to “protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications” like TikTok.
If passed and signed into law, it would make it illegal to distribute apps developed by ByteDance, its subsidiaries and other firms “controlled by a foreign adversary,” unless the company offloads the app within 180 days.
In effect, the bill would give ByteDance a choice: either sell TikTok before the six-month deadline, or retain control and be banned from U.S. app stores and web-hosting services.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who leads the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said Wednesday that the new bill would alleviate national security concerns while protecting Americans’ free speech rights.
“If you value your personal freedom and privacy online, if you care about Americans’ national security at home, and yes, even if you want TikTok to stick around in the United States, this bill offers the only real step toward each of those goals,” said Gallagher, who introduced the bill with Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the China committee.
Gallagher said it “provides the only path for the app to continue its operations in the United States without threatening Americans’ online freedom, privacy and security.”
Lawmakers from both parties have repeatedly expressed concerns that TikTok could be forced to hand over the data it collects on millions of American users to the Chinese government, which could in turn use it for espionage purposes. They have also warned that the app could be used to spread propaganda and misinformation.
TikTok has denied that it shares information with the Chinese government, though its CEO acknowledged to Congress last year that TikTok had collected location data on U.S. users in the past, and said some historical data was still stored in servers that could be accessed by engineers from ByteDance.
