Senators In The US Defend Biden's Attempt To Give Him New Tools In Order To Ban Tiktok

There are two U.S. senators who are proposing to give the Biden administration new powers to ban Chinese-owned short video app TikTok, arguing that such a measure is a reasonable means of addressing security concerns regarding a range of foreign-owned apps.

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Last month, Senate senators Mark Warner, a Democrat, and John Thune, a Republican, introduced the Restrict Act, a bill that would give the Commerce Department a new power to review, block, and respond to a wide range of international information technology and communications technologies transactions that pose a potential national security threat.

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As part of the bill, Warner and Thune stated that it was intended to modernize the president's international economic authority in order to keep pace with the digital era, establish significant guardrails on presidential authority, empower Congress to overturn certain presidential decisions, and develop a risk-based process to combat foreign adversary technology," according to a Trade Algo article.

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Restrict Act is supported by the White House and 26 senators and would apply to foreign technology from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. Many people are saying that the bill is overbroad and violates civil liberties of American citizens, especially those who are using TikTok. There are more than 150 million TikTok users in the United States.

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Last week, the Republican House Financial Services Committee tweeted that the Restrict Act would make the Commerce Department "the dictator of trade, sanctions, investments, cryptocurrency, and so on for the next 15 years.".

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TikTok is not targeted by senators; instead, it is targeted by people who use virtual private networks to access the video sharing app.

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"An intense, well-funded lobbying campaign from the Chinese company has misrepresented our bill in bad faith," they wrote. "It isn’t hard to figure out why: There’s money to be made by allowing TikTok to continue its current operations in the U.S. and not much to be made by protecting American citizens from national-security threats."

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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress last month and faced tough questions about national security concerns over the ByteDance-owned app.

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TikTok, which did not immediately comment Thursday, says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.

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Last week, Republican Senator Rand Paul blocked a bid to fast-track a separate bill to ban TikTok introduced by Senator Josh Hawley, who said the Restrict Act "doesn’t ban TikTok. It gives the president a whole bunch of new authority."

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The Biden administration has demanded TikTok's Chinese owners divest their stakes or face a U.S. ban. Then President Donald Trump's attempts in 2020 to ban TikTok were blocked by U.S. courts.

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Earlier this week, Democratic Representative Cori Bush said that Congress should pass comprehensive data protection legislation rather than focusing on one company to address industry-wide concerns."