Democrats in the United States Senate have opened the door on Sunday to ban the social network TikTok in the country, citing national security concerns over fears that Beijing use the data from the platform to spy on Americans.
Asking in an interview with ABC about the possibility of banning the social network in the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has detailed that “It’s something that needs to be looked at.”
“We know that there is Chinese ownership of the company that owns TikTok. And there is some people in the Trade Committee who are looking into that right now. We’ll see where they come out,” Schumer said. The words of the representative of the Democratic Party in the United States Upper House take place months after the Senate unanimously approved a rule that prohibits the use of the TikTok application by federal employees on government-owned devices.
US lawmakers said they feared that the data, collected by the company, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, could be passed on to the Chinese government. Republican Senators Josh Hawley Ken Buck also introduced a bill last week to ban TikTok, which has more than 85 million users in the United States alone, from any American device.
Still, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will appear before the Senate House Committee on Commerce and Energy in March. As announced by the committee, Shou will discuss “TikTok’s consumer privacy and data security practicesthe impact of platforms on children and their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party”.
Source: Lasexta
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