A US House of Representatives committee voted Wednesday in favor of a bill that would make it easier for the House of Representatives to ban the TikTok app, which is owned by a Chinese company, amid criticism that the proposal threatens freedom of expression.
The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the “Deterring America’s Technology Adversaries” bill, but the text will face opposition from free speech activists and Democrats when it goes to a vote in the House and Senate.
“The bill requires the administration to ban TikTok or any software applications that threaten the national security of the United States,” said committee chairman Michael McCaul.
He added, “TikTok poses a security threat. It allows (China) to manipulate and monitor its users while it collects Americans’ data for use in their malicious activities.”
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is under verification in several countries due to privacy and surveillance concerns.
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The proposed legislation amends a law passed in the 1980s that prevents the government from restricting the free flow of visual entertainment between foreign countries, by adding an exception related to “sensitive personal data.”
The proposed legislation would require the US administration to impose sanctions – including bans – on companies bent on knowingly giving TikTok user data to “any foreign person” with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
For his part, a TikTok official said the company was “disappointed to see this hasty piece of legislation moving forward” in Congress.
“The US ban on TikTok is a ban on exporting American culture and values to the more than a billion people who use its service around the world,” company spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter added in a statement.
For its part, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a letter to the committee Monday that the legislation may violate the rights of Americans enshrined in the amendment.
The committee’s top Democrat, Gregory Meeks, lamented “Republicans’ “instinct to ban the things they fear from books to speech.”
He added, “Before we take the unprecedented step of banning an app used by more than 100 million Americans, harming our national security, and violating their freedom of expression and speech, Congress should first consult appropriately with the administration and other stakeholders.”
