The Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok can now be blocked by the US government, according to a statement by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. The White House welcomed the bill allowing a ban on TikTok.
Mark Warner, a senior member of the Democratic party in the US Senate, and John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, joined forces to support the legislation.
“We applaud the bipartisan group of senators, led by Senators Warner and Thune, who today introduced the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” said Sullivan.
According to the bipartisan bill, “the United States government would be given the authority to restrict some foreign governments from using technology services… in a way that poses threats to Americans’ sensitive data and our national security,” the speaker noted in a statement.
“Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the US,” said Senator Warner in a statement.
“Before TikTok, however, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks. And before that, it was Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, which threatened the security of government and corporate devices,” he added.
TikTok, which has more than a billion users worldwide, including more than 100 million in the US, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.