Republican members of Congress, led by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Okla.), are reintroducing legislation to ban the installation of the social media app TikTok on government devices.
Republican members of Congress, led by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Texas), are reintroducing legislation to ban the installation of the social media app TikTok on government devices, citing significant national security risks posed by the Chinese-owned platform.
This No TikTok on Government Devices Act, originally introduced in 2020, sailed through the Senate in August, but did not come to a vote in the House.
The bill was reintroduced with a number of new co-sponsors. These include Senators Rick Scott (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Tom Cotton (R-UT). In addition, Republican Rep. Ken Buck (R-Mich.) will also introduce a similar bill in the House.
“TikTok is a Communist Chinese Trojan horse that has no place on government devices – or any U.S. device for that matter.” Hawley said Thursday (April 15).
“My bill is a straightforward plan to protect U.S. government data from hostile foreign powers that passed the Senate unanimously less than a year ago.” Hawley said.
Hawley added that TikTok has repeatedly proven itself to be a malicious actor, calling on President Joe Biden to take the threat of Chinese Communist spying seriously.
Ken Buck, the highest ranking Republican member of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, is sponsoring a House version of the same bill.
(This bill) is in the best interest of our national security,” Barker said. Chinese-owned apps must report user data to the Chinese Communist Party, which is why we cannot allow TikTok to have sensitive data that exists on U.S. government devices.”
Rubio also emphasized that TikTok “poses a potential threat to personal privacy and our national security interests.”
Rubio said, “There is absolutely no reason to use an app like this, which could be used by Beijing to advance malicious diplomatic operations, for a federal agency.” “In its current form, this platform is not secure.”
TikTok is currently banned from the devices of several federal government agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the Transportation Security Administration. The legislation would ban it from being used on devices across all federal government departments.
TikTok, an overseas version of the Chinese short-form video app “Jitterbug” whose parent company is Beijing-based ByteDance and whose users are predominantly young, has said that about 60 percent of its active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump issued a ban on TikTok last year, forcing ByteDance to sell its U.S. business.
After the Biden administration took office, it temporarily suspended the ban and said it would conduct a comprehensive assessment of the potential security risks posed by TikTok, whose plans to sell its U.S. business to Oracle and Walmart Inc. have been put on hold indefinitely. As of April 2021, Bytespring still lists TikTok as one of its owned products.
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