US House speaker says lawmakers to move forward with TikTok bill By Reuters

Written by Kanishka Singh and Leah Douglas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday that lawmakers will move forward with legislation to address national security concerns about TikTok, alleging that the Chinese government has access to the short-video app’s user data.

In the US, there are growing calls to ban TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to give President Joe Biden the administrative legal authority to order a ban. Devices owned by the US government have recently been blocked from installing the app.

“The House of Representatives will move forward with legislation to protect Americans from the Chinese Communist Party’s technological tentacles,” McCarthy said on Twitter.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before a US House of Representatives committee for about five hours Thursday, and was questioned by lawmakers from both parties about national security and other concerns about the app, which has 150 million US users.

In Thursday’s hearing, the TikTok CEO was asked if the app had spied on Americans at Beijing’s request. Chiu replied, “No.”

Then Republican Representative Neil Dunn pointed to the company’s December disclosure that some China-based employees of ByteDance improperly accessed the TikTok user data of two journalists and are no longer employed by the company. He repeated his question about whether ByteDance was spying.

“I don’t think spying is the right way to describe it,” Chiu said. He went on to describe the reports as an “internal investigation” before cutting them off.

McCarthy, a Republican, said in a tweet on Sunday, “It’s deeply troubling that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know is true – China has access to TikTok user data.”

The company says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts under the name “Project Texas” which currently has nearly 1,500 full-time and contract employees. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:) to store US TikTok user data.

Rather than assuaging lawmakers’ fears, Qiu’s appearance before Congress on Thursday “actually increased the possibility that Congress will take some action,” Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the CPC House Select Committee, told ABC News on Monday. Sunday site.

Former US President Donald Trump lost a series of court rulings in 2020 when he sought to ban TikTok and another Chinese-owned app, WeChat, a unit of Tencent.

Many Democrats also raised concerns even though they did not explicitly support the US ban.