US lawmakers table bipartisan bill to ban TikTok in the US over national security concerns

US lawmakers in the House and Senate on Tuesday unveiled legislation to effectively ban TikTok heeding the previous warnings from the FBI director and cybersecurity experts. Speculations arose that the app was used by China for alleged spying on global citizens. The bill would "protect Americans by blocking and prohibiting all transactions from any social media company in, or under the influence of, China, Russia, and several other foreign countries of concern," the lawmakers stated in a news release.

TikTok sells data to ruling Chinese Communist Party: Lawmakers

The legislation was brought by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., with a companion measure introduced in the House by Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill. It was announced in House by the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. He accused TikTok's parent company, ByteDance of selling the TikTok data to the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. The bill was named as  A.N.T.I.S.O.C.I.A.L.C.C.P. Act.

"From the FBI Director to FCC Commissioners to cybersecurity experts, everyone has made clear the risk of TikTok being used to spy on Americans," Rubio's office said in a statement.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also shot warnings about national security as she noted that the app presents “legitimate national security concerns." The app TikTok is already banned in India over national security concerns. The Indian government said in an announcement, at the time of the ban, that the decision was made "to protect the data and privacy of its 1.3 billion citizens" and to disrupt the technology that was "stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data in unauthorized servers outside India".

FBI Director Chris Wray also previously raised concerns about TikTok being a national security threat as he warned that the popular Chinese video-sharing app “that doesn't share our values" was used for alleged spying by the Chinese government. Wray said that the Chinese authorities have the ability to control the app's algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content and if they want to, to use it for influence operations." Furthermore, Wray accused China of collecting the user's data and personal information via the app to fulfill its what he described as traditional espionage operations. Trump administration in 2020 had threatened to ban the app and ordered the parent firm ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US company in order to continue operation. 

"All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn't share our values, and that has a mission that's very much at odds with what's in the best interests of the United States. That should concern us,” Wray said at a conference at the University of Michigan's Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy.