• Home
  • Apps
  • Apps News
  • US Panel to Vote on TikTok Ban Over National Security Concerns in February

US Panel to Vote on TikTok Ban Over National Security Concerns in February

In 2020, Donald Trump attempted to block new users from downloading TikTok in the US.

US Panel to Vote on TikTok Ban Over National Security Concerns in February

Photo Credit: Unsplash/ Solen Feyissa

A recent US legislation banned federal employees from using TikTok on government-owned devices

Highlights
  • TikTok, CFIUS have been in talks to reach a national security agreement
  • A ban on TikTok would need 60 votes in the US CFIUS and TikSenate to pass
  • Donald Trump attempted to block users from downloading TikTok in 2020
Advertisement

The House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to hold a vote next month on a bill aimed at blocking the use of China's popular social media app TikTok in the United States, the committee confirmed on Friday.

The measure, planned by the panel's chair Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican, would aim to give the White House the legal tools to ban TikTok over US national security concerns.

"The concern is that this app gives the Chinese government a back door into our phones," McCaul told Bloomberg News, which reported the vote timing earlier.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump attempted to block new users from downloading TikTok and ban other transactions that would have effectively blocked the app's use in the United States, but lost a series of court battles over the measure.

The Biden administration in June 2021 formally abandoned that effort. Then in December, Republican Senator Marco Rubio unveiled bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok, which would also block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China and Russia.

But a ban of the short video app, which is owned by ByteDance and is popular among teens, would face significant hurdles in Congress to pass, and would need 60 votes in the Senate.

For three years, TikTok - which has more than 100 million US users - has been seeking to assure Washington that the personal data of US citizens cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China's Communist Party or anyone else under Beijing's influence.

TikTok said Friday "calls for total bans of TikTok take a piecemeal approach to national security and a piecemeal approach to broad industry issues like data security, privacy, and online harms."

The US government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that US user data could be passed on to China's government.

CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks since 2021, aiming to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of US TikTok users.

TikTok said it had a "comprehensive package of measures with layers of government and independent oversight to ensure that there are no backdoors into TikTok that could be used to manipulate the platform" and invested roughly $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 12,300 crore) to date on those efforts.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the bill on Friday. "It's under review by (CFIUS) so I am just not going to get into details on that," Jean-Pierre said.

Last month, Biden signed legislation that included a ban on federal employees using or downloading TikTok on government-owned devices. More than 25 US states have also banned the use of TikTok on state-owned devices.

© Thomson Reuters 2023


The Infinix Zero Ultra has a decent set of specifications on paper, but does the phone justify its high asking price? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.
Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

Further reading: TikTok
Twitter to Let Users Appeal Account Suspension Starting February 1
Share on Facebook Gadgets360 Twitter Share Tweet Snapchat Share Reddit Comment google-newsGoogle News
 
 

Advertisement

Follow Us

Advertisement

© Copyright Red Pixels Ventures Limited 2024. All rights reserved.
Trending Products »
Latest Tech News »