‘Subversive data collection’: GOP-led House panel advances bill authorizing Biden to ban TikTok
ban TikTok nationwide.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 24-16 along party lines to advance the Deterring America’s Technology Adversaries Act, or DATA Act. The bill — introduced by committee chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas — would allow Biden to enact nationwide bans on software applications that are deemed a national security threat. Republicans have been especially critical of TikTok, owned by Beijing-based Bytedance.
“TikTok is a modern day Trojan Horse of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), used to surveil and exploit Americans’ personal information,” McCaul said Tuesday during the committee’s lengthy discussion of the bill. “This legislation is the first step in protecting Americans against subversive data collection”
The Biden administration and lawmakers in both parties have expressed concern that TikTok could allow the Chinese Communist Party to gather information about American customers or that it could be used to spread misinformation.
Though some Democrats have expressed similar concerns about the social media app’s national security implications, the party’s top committee member, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, “forcefully and unequivocally” opposed the measure, calling it too broad and “unvetted.”
“We could have held hearings before the markup and carefully crafted bipartisan legislation together,” Meeks said Tuesday. “Instead, my staff and I received the text of this legislation a little over a week ago, and have only had several days to review a bill that would dramatically rewrite the rules-based international economic order.”
ban TikTok from all government-issued devices, giving federal agencies 30 days to delete the app.Tick-tock, TikTok: Biden sets deadline for ban of social media app