More needs to be done to protect Americans’ data and privacy from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than banning Tik-Tok from government-issued devices and banning sales of Huawei and ZTE equipment, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) said.
“Due to clear security risks, my office prohibited TikTok from being used on official devices long before it became a House rule,” Moore told State Newswire. “The United States is actively protecting Americans from national security threats involving telecommunications, including most recently banning Huawei and ZTE equipment sales. I am serious about safeguarding Americans’ information and data from the CCP, and I encourage efforts to keep TikTok off government devices. However, we must work harder to protect the information and biometric data of children and young people who are compromised through TikTok and also ensure the CCP can’t use technology to influence the development of America’s children.”
Catherine L. Szpindor, the House of Representatives' chief administrative officer, announced in a memo in late December that the popular app must be deleted from House-issued devices, citing security risks, while some doctors have found that TikTok can have negative effects on users' mental health.
Szpindor notified staff in an internal memo that her office’s cybersecurity unit had determined that TikTok posed “high risk to users due to a number of security risks” and must be deleted from mobile phones, NBC News reported.
TikTok said in a December statement that it is working to “meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them,” NBC reported.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told an audience at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in early December that the FBI believes China can use TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, to collect users’ data, and manipulate content to use it for influence operations, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Wray said these tools are in the hands of a government with different values and a mission at odds with the best interests of the United States, AP News reported. TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas said in a September Senate hearing that the Chinese government cannot access American users’ data.
In December, four ByteDance employees, two of whom were based in China, accessed the IP addresses and other data of American TikTok users, including journalists, reportedly to discover the source of leaked information, Engadget reported. ByteDance fired the four employees and said in a statement, “ByteDance condemns this misguided plan that seriously violated the company’s Code of Conduct.”
David Barnhart, a clinical mental health counselor at Behavioral Sciences of Alabama, said TikTok’s format makes it especially addictive, even compared to other social media apps, and can harm young peoples’ self-esteem, WAFF reported.
In November, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted unanimously to prohibit sales of new equipment produced by Chinese telecoms companies Huawei and ZTE, Reuters reported.
Wray said in 2020, “If Chinese companies like Huawei are given unfettered access to our telecommunications infrastructure, they could collect any of your information that traverses their devices or networks. Worse still: They'd have no choice but to hand it over to the Chinese government, if asked,” Reuters reported.
Moore is a Utah native who worked for small businesses and in the foreign service before being elected to represent the state’s First Congressional District, according to his website.
