Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, recently said that he supports the ban of social media app TikTok on House-issued devices and believes that there is bipartisan support for addressing security risks associated with China, but adds that lawmakers must be cautious moving forward to ensure that they do not provoke avoidable conflicts.
“The security risks associated with Members of Congress using TikTok on their House devices are very real. I support the ban and agree that we need to look carefully at what more can be done to ensure the government of the People’s Republic of China is not able to use its control and influence over applications such as TikTok for espionage purposes,” Smith said in a statement. “Both sides of the aisle are focused on addressing those risks as well as the broader issue of the United States’ ability to compete with China economically. But we must ensure that we do so without causing avoidable conflicts and without contributing to xenophobic attacks on China that are designed to inflame a political base and fill campaign coffers rather than strengthen our national security or economy.”
In December, Catherine Szpindor, the House's chief administrative officer, issued a memo notifying staff 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 reported.
"House staff are NOT allowed to download the TikTok app on any House mobile devices," the memo stated. "If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it."
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." FBI Director Christopher Wray recently expressed concerns over the potential for the Chinese government to engage in espionage or influence via TikTok, according to NBC.
In November, Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee that the FBI has "national security concerns" about TikTok operations in the U.S., saying that the Chinese government could use the app to influence Americans or control their devices, NPR reported. Wray said the FBI's concerns "include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose, or to control software on millions of devices, which gives it an opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices." TikTok's parent company ByteDance is based in China, where national security laws state that companies must share data with the government if asked. Last summer, leaked audio from a ByteDance meeting confirmed that China-based ByteDance employees could and had accessed the non-public data of American TikTok users on multiple occasions.
Speaking to an audience at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Wray said in early December that the FBI believes China can use TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, to collect users' data, as well as manipulate the app's algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations," AP News reported.
“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.
TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas said in a September Senate hearing that the Chinese government cannot access American users' data.
“We will never share data, period,” she said.
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 in an effort to discern 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. We have taken disciplinary measures and none of the individuals found to have directly participated in or overseen the misguided plan remain employed at ByteDance."
Thirty-one states have prohibited TikTok from being downloaded on state devices, and multiple other states have proposed similar bans, Forbes reported.
Smith served in the Washington State Senate before being elected to represent the state's Ninth Congressional District, according to his website.
