Kevin McCarthy, U.S. House of Representatives speaker, believes China’s government had access to user data on TikTok, thus announcing TikTok Bill progress on Sunday that lawmakers would move forward with a bill to address national security concerns about the short video app TikTok.
There are more and more calls in the United States to ban TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to lend President Joe Biden’s administration the legal power to seek a ban. The app can no longer be installed on devices owned by the U.S. government.
More and more people in the United States want to ban the Chinese company ByteDance’s app TikTok. (Photo: Getty Images)
TikTok Bill Progress Moved Forward to Protect Americans
McCarthy said on Twitter that the House would move forward with TikTok Bill progress and legislation to protect Americans from the Chinese Communist Party’s technological reach.
On Thursday, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, testified before a U.S. House Committee for about five hours. Lawmakers from both parties asked him about national security and other problems with the app, which has 150 million users in the U.S.
At the hearing on Thursday, the CEO of TikTok was asked if Beijing had asked the app to spy on Americans. “No,” replied Chew.
Republican Representative Neal Dunn then brought up the fact that the company had said in December that some China-based ByteDance employees had gotten into the TikTok user data of two journalists without permission and were no longer working for the company. He asked again whether ByteDance was spying on him.
Chew said, “I don’t think spying is the right word for it.” He went on to say that the reports were part of an “internal investigation,” but he was cut off there.
After TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said that Congress will work on laws about the app. (Photo: AP Newsroom/AP)
McCarthy states in a tweet on Sunday, “It’s very worrying that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and say what we already knew to be true: China has access to TikTok user data.”
The company says that “Project Texas,” which has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and a contract with Oracle Corp to store TikTok’s U.S. user data, has cost more than $1.5 billion.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told ABC News on Sunday that Chew’s appearance before Congress on Thursday did not ease lawmakers’ worries in the TikTok Bill progress. Instead, it made it more likely that Congress would do something, he said.
When former U.S. President Donald Trump tried to ban the apps TikTok and WeChat, both of which are owned by the Chinese company Tencent, he lost in court several times in 2020.
Many Democrats have also raised concerns about but haven’t said they support the U.S. TikTok Bill progress yet.
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