US House panel approves bill to let Joe Biden ban TikTok
- The House Foreign Affairs Committee votes 24 to 16 in favour of the measure, the latest setback for the Chinese-owned short video app
- TikTok has come under increasing fire in recent weeks over fears that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government
Legislation that would give US President Joe Biden the power to ban the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok nationwide advanced in Congress on Wednesday, a setback for the app as it tries to prove that it does not pose a security threat.
Representatives on the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 24 to 16, along party lines, to approve the measure to give the White House new powers to ban the app – which is used by more than 100 million Americans – in addition to other apps considered security risks.
Democrats opposed the bill, which was sponsored by the committee’s chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, arguing that Congress should not get in the way of a pending review of TikTok by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Known as CFIUS, the inter-agency body, which includes input from the departments of the Treasury, Defence, Commerce and Homeland Security, is trying to determine whether Beijing can gain access to TikTok user personal data, thereby undermining national security interests.
02:41
US orders TikTok be removed from all government devices within 30 days
“We’ve been negotiating this [with Democrats] for a solid month, without a whole lot of progress,” McCaul told Politico after the vote.
