US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Sunday lawmakers will move forward with legislation to address national security worries about TikTok.
This comes after TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before a hostile House of Representatives committee on Thursday, as lawmakers discussed a ban on the popular video-sharing app.
‘The House will be moving forward with legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party,’ McCarthy said on Twitter.
In the United States, there are growing calls to ban TikTok, owned by China-based company ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to give President Joe Biden’s administration legal authority to seek a ban.
In Thursday’s hearing, the TikTok CEO was asked if the app, has spied on Americans at Beijing’s request. Chew answered, ‘No.’
‘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.’ said McCarthy, a Republican, in his tweet.
Chew tried to assure lawmakers that it was boosting its data security efforts under the name ‘Project Texas’ which currently has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and is contracted with an American company, Oracle, to store TikTok’s US user data.
Rather than appease lawmakers’ concerns, Chew’s appearance before 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, told ABC News on Sunday.
This month, the White House gave government agencies 30 days to ensure that TikTok is not on any federal devices and systems.
More than 30 US states, Canada, UK and European Union policy institutions have also banned TikTok from being loaded onto state-owned devices.
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