Republican Senator Josh Hawley has labeled the video-sharing app “China’s backdoor into the lives of Americans.”
Republicans in the House and Senate have submitted legislation to ban TikTok on all devices in the US and to limit transactions with its Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, alleging it poses a significant national security risk.
Senator Josh Hawley and Representative Ken Buck introduced the ‘No TikTok on United States Devices Act’ on Wednesday, intending to include previous legislation that has already prohibited the app from being used on government computers.
“TikTok poses a threat to all Americans who have the app on their devices. It opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal information, keystrokes, and location through aggressive data harvesting,” Hawley said. “Banning it on government devices was a step in the right direction, but now is the time to ban it nationwide to protect the American people.”
The bill would invoke the president’s authorities under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law which allows the White House to intervene in commerce during a national emergency. US entities that continue to do business with ByteDance would be subject to penalties under the proposed legislation.
TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter was critical of the bill, saying it “takes a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy, and online harms.”
“We hope that [Hawley] will focus his energies on efforts to address those issues holistically, rather than pretending that banning a single service would solve any of the problems he’s concerned about or make Americans any safer,” the spokesperson added.
While Hawley told reporters on Capitol Hill that his proposal “particularly goes after TikTok” and “bans it,” the bill’s wording appears to have no provision prohibiting the app from being used on American devices. It’s unclear how such a prohibition would be implemented.
In addition to prohibiting transactions with ByteDance and other TikTok-related organizations, the proposed measure requires the US intelligence agency to write a report on the claimed “national security danger presented by TikTok.” The study would examine whether the Chinese government may use the app to obtain US data, particularly for “intelligence or military reasons,” and would detail Beijing’s “ongoing attempts” to monitor or control American individuals online.
Hawley has led a group of senators, mostly Republicans, who have been harshly critical of TikTok and its Chinese parent company, calling the app “China’s backdoor into Americans’ life.” He led the fight to prohibit TikTok on some government devices late last year, which won bipartisan backing, but he claims the legislation was insufficient.
