(FamilyConservationPAC.com) – According to a recent report, the House Republican Conference is attempting to prohibit federal employees from using TikTok.
With Republicans in control of the next Congress, legislation will be presented to the Judiciary Committee, which is expected to be chaired by Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan.
.@RepGallagher is right. The time has come to ban TikTok. pic.twitter.com/jOuBmEXlFM
— Senator Rubio Press (@SenRubioPress) November 28, 2022
The measure comes days before Republican Kristi Noem of South Dakota issues an executive order banning TikTok by state contractors and employees using official devices.
Her action follows similar restrictions on the use of the app by the U.S. Military, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and other government entities.
There is also widespread worry that the Chinese government accesses TikTok user data to negatively influence the United States.
What is TikTok And Why Is It Such A Danger To Americans?
TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to create short videos to share with friends and, for some influencers, the internet at large.
With over 1 billion active users around the globe in 2021, TikTok is a fast-rising star on the social media scene.
Its parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. TikTok has around 86.9 million users in the United States, and the app has quickly become an integral part of American culture.
While in office in 2020, former President Donald Trump tried to outlaw TikTok but was unsuccessful. Democrats, among others, have finally acknowledged that he was correct.
The Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democratic Senator Mark Warner, appeared on Fox News Sunday, admitting that Trump was correct about TikTok.
“As hard as it is for me to say, if Donald Trump was right and we could have taken action then, that’d have been a heckuva lot easier than attempting to take action in November of 2022,” the senator said during the interview.
“What can we do now? Did Washington simply not listen because they didn’t like the message then?” Bream enquired.
Warner answered,
“Well, I think Donald Trump was right. “TikTok poses a serious threat, I mean.”
TikTok is “a big collector of information,” according to Warner, including information from kids.
Therefore, Warner stated, “If you’re a parent and you have a kid on TikTok, I would be very concerned.” Somewhere in Beijing, your child inputs and receives all that data is being saved.”
They also wrote that the CCP could use TikTok to spread disinformation to promote its preferred narratives:
“The CCP could also use TikTok to propagate videos that support party-friendly politicians or exacerbate discord in American society. Such videos need not originate from CCP proxies — they could be created by anyone.
With unlimited data on user-made content, Beijing can leverage it to fan the flames of domestic division.
And thanks to the rising number of adults who get their news from TikTok, the platform can influence which issues Americans learn about. They can also control what information they consider accurate and what conclusions they draw from world events.
This places extraordinary power in the hands of company employees who could be overruled by the CCP.
Sen. Tom Cotton said he recently wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas requesting details regarding foreign TikTok employees working in the U.S.
According to Cotton, TikTok
“captures large amounts of private information on users, including Americans. And has long been suspected of potentially giving the CCP access to that information.”
In addition to endangering American citizens’ safety and security, the Chinese government can hunt down Federal personnel and contractors and use their whereabouts as leverage in a blackmail scheme.
How likely is a TikTok ban in the United States?
Although an outright ban on TikTok in the United States is conceivable (it has already occurred in India), much time would need to pass before it happened.
The federal government hasn’t done anything to regulate TikTok, let alone outlaw it for all American users. The only recourse, for now, is that it’s forbidden to use the program on government-issued smartphones.
It is challenging to govern data security or privacy with rules that do not yet exist because Congress has not yet passed the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. This bill has been proposed but has yet to be passed.
The inquiry by the Biden administration is still underway, and no conclusions have been made public. The U.S. and China are engaged in a delicate dance to balance their respective ideas about controlling content and data with profitability and autonomy.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a division of the Treasury Department, is still in discussions with TikTok to develop a security agreement.
Do you believe TikTok should be banned in America?
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