Senate Passes TikTok Ban Bill Amid China Surveillance Concerns
On Tuesday night, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill that mandates the banning of TikTok in the United States if its parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t divest the platform within the next nine to twelve months. This move reflects concerns among U.S. lawmakers regarding potential data access and surveillance by China through the app.
The bill had earlier passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday, and President Joe Biden has indicated his intention to sign it into law on Wednesday. “Permitting the Chinese Communist Party to oversee one of America’s most beloved apps for an extended period has been a perilous oversight,” stated Senator Marco Rubio, the prominent Republican on the Intelligence Committee.
“Implementing a new law to mandate its Chinese proprietor to divest the app is a beneficial move for America.” When questioned about the Senate’s decision, the Chinese foreign ministry referred on Wednesday to remarks made by the ministry in March when a similar bill was passed by the House of Representatives.
TikTok Bill Sparks Free Speech Debate
At that time, the ministry criticized the legislation, contending that “despite the U.S. never finding any evidence of TikTok posing a threat to national security, it has persistently targeted TikTok.”
The prolonged four-year conflict concerning TikTok, which boasts 170 million users in the United States, is just one aspect of a broader struggle over internet and technology between Washington and Beijing.
Recently, Apple disclosed that Beijing had instructed it to eliminate Meta Platforms WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China due to Chinese national security apprehensions. TikTok intends to contest the bill based on First Amendment principles, and it’s anticipated that TikTok users will once again pursue legal action. In November, a U.S. judge in Montana halted a state ban on TikTok, citing free speech considerations.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressed concerns that banning or mandating divestiture of TikTok would establish a troubling international precedent, indicating excessive government influence over social media platforms. They emphasized that if the United States were to ban a foreign-owned platform, it could prompt similar actions by other nations.
Senate Rushes TikTok Divestment Bill Amid U.S.-China Friction
TikTok asserts that it has not shared and has no intention of sharing U.S. user data with the Chinese government, refrained from immediate comment but has informed employees of its intention to swiftly challenge the legislation in court.The Senate passed the bill with a vote of 79 to 18, attaching it to a measure providing
$95 billion in primarily military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The rapid approval of the TikTok divestment directive, introduced just weeks ago, indicates its urgency.
In 2020, former President Donald Trump faced legal setbacks in his attempts to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a Tencent subsidiary, in the United States. However, experts believe the new legislation could provide the Biden administration with a firmer legal basis to ban TikTok if ByteDance fails to divest the app.
Should ByteDance fail to divest TikTok, major app stores operated by Apple, Google, and others would be prohibited from offering TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications or TikTok’s website. Moreover, the bill grants the White House enhanced authority to prohibit or compel the sale of additional foreign-owned apps identified as security risks.
TikTok Divestment Deadline Looms Amid Free Speech Concerns
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden expressed concerns that the bill grants broad authority that could potentially be misused by future administrations to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.
Upon the bill’s enactment,ByteDance will be given a period of 270 days to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations.
ByteDance will be given a period of 270 days to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations. operations, with the possibility of a three-month extension if there are indications of progress toward a deal.
However, Democratic Senator Ed Markey suggested that divesting by early 2025 would be challenging, if not impossible, describing a sale as an exceedingly intricate and costly transaction requiring extensive due diligence over months, if not years.
The CCP we should be talking about isn’t in China. It’s Big Tech’s CCP policy: Crushing Children’s Privacy. That’s why I that’s why I’m speaking in defense of free speech & children’s privacy and against a TikTok ban. https://t.co/3C9AqzcoTK
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) April 23, 2024
Markey emphasized the likely consequence of the law as essentially a TikTok ban, warning against downplaying or denying the censorship implications, stating, “Censorship is not who we are as a people.”
The bill may also become a focal point in the November presidential campaign, with Republican candidate Trump advocating for young voters to consider the potential for a TikTok ban.
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