U.S. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), signed up with by fellow Republican legislators, holds an interview at the U.S. Capitol on March 24, 2023 in Washington, DC.
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U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy stated on Sunday legislators will progress with legislation to attend to nationwide security fret about TikTok, declaring China’s federal government had access to the brief video app’s user information.
In the United States, there are growing calls to prohibit TikTok, owned by China- based business ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to provide President Joe Biden’s administration legal authority to look for a restriction. Devices owned by the U.S. federal government were just recently prohibited from having actually the app set up.
“The House will be moving forward with legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party,” McCarthy stated on Twitter.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared prior to a U.S. House Committee for about 5 hours on Thursday, and legislators from both celebrations grilled him about nationwide security and other issues including the app, which has 150 million American users.
In Thursday’s hearing, the TikTok CEO was asked if the app has actually spied on Americans at Beijing’s demand. Chew addressed, “No.”
Republican Representative Neal Dunn then referenced the business’s disclosure in December that some China- based workers at ByteDance poorly accessed TikTok user information of 2 reporters and were no longer utilized by the business. He duplicated his concern about whether ByteDance was spying.
“I don’t think that spying is the right way to describe it,” Chew stated. He went on to explain the reports as including an “internal investigation” prior to being cut off.
McCarthy, a Republican, stated in a tweet on Sunday, “It’s very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know to be true — China has access to TikTok user data.”
The business states it has actually invested more than $1.5 billion on information security efforts under the name “Project Texas” which presently has almost 1,500 full-time workers and is contracted with Oracle Corp to save TikTok’s U.S. user information.
Rather than calm legislators’ issues, Chew’s look prior to Congress on Thursday “actually increased the likelihood that Congress will take some action,” Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, informed ABC News on Sunday.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump lost a series of court judgments in 2020 when he looked for to prohibit TikTok and another Chinese- owned app, WeChat, a system of Tencent.
Many Democrats likewise have actually raised issues although have not yet clearly backed a U.S. restriction.
