The US Senate on Wednesday passed a bill, voted by voice, to restrict government employees from using Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok on government-owned devices.
The bill is pending for approval by the US House of Representatives before going to President Joe Biden for approval. The House of Representatives must pass the bill while the current congressional session is going on, before its expected end next week.
The vote is another move by the US lawmakers to clampdown on Chinese companies amid national security fears that China could use them to spy on Americans.
The action by the Senate is taken after the states of North Dakota and Iowa this week banned TikTok, joining an increasing number of US states in doing so. The US states are banning TikTok from government owned devices fearing the data might leak to the Chinese government.
TikTok is a short video based social media platform. It was developed by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company.
The Senate in August 2020, during the last Congress, had approved the bill to ban the Chinese social media platform from government devices. The bill was then proposed by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who reintroduced it in 2021.
Various federal agencies including the Defense, Homeland Security and State departments have already banned TikTok from devices linked to the government. “TikTok is a major security risk to the United States, and it has no place on government devices,” Hawley said earlier.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds issued orders forbidding executive branch agencies from downloading the app on any government-linked equipment. Till now, many US states have taken banned TikTok, including Alabama and Utah this week.
Commenting on the ongoing situation in the United States, TikTok, said the concerns are largely fueled by misinformation and it would be happy to meet with policymakers to discuss the company’s practices.
“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok that will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States,” it said on Wednesday.
States that are taking such actions are Texas, Maryland and South Dakota.
In response to American concerns that TikTok may be used to spy on citizens and censor material, Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday unveiled bipartisan legislation to outlaw the app completely in the country. This increased pressure on ByteDance. Additionally, Rubio is a supporter of Hawley’s measure banning TikTok from government use.
Rubio’s office issued a statement, saying, “The legislation would block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China and Russia.”
At a hearing last month, FBI Director Chris Wray said TikTok’s U.S. operations raise national security concerns.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump tried to stop new users from downloading TikTok and prohit specific transactions that would have helped in blocking the apps’ use in the United States but lost a series of court battles over the measure.
Due to concerns that U.S. user data would be given to the Chinese government, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a significant national security body, ordered ByteDance to sell its TikTok shares in 2020. However, ByteDance has not complied with this order.
In order to secure the data of TikTok’s more than 100 million users, CFIUS and TikTok have been in negotiations for months. However, it doesn’t look like a solution will be struck before the end of the year.
