TikTok is advertised as a social network where users view and share short videos, and it has grown to be wildly popular in the United States, especially among younger Americans. Many users on TikTok spend hours consuming the news, communicating with friends, and sharing content on the platform.
Just like other social media companies, TikTok absorbs an immense amount of information about American citizens. So, just like other platforms, data security and transparency is imperative. Since its rapid ascension among social apps, however, TikTok has become controversial because its owner, ByteDance, is a Chinese company and is therefore bound by Chinese law to comply with the intelligence agencies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
By virtue of the CCP governing TikTok, this creates a national security concern as the data of millions of Americans is left exposed to Communist China. By permitting and promoting TikTok inside the United States, the CCP has a deceptive tool to mine the sensitive personal information, including internet browsing data, keystrokes, and location information, of individual American users.
It is the responsibility of government to protect its people from foreign adversaries. To protect against sensitive data being left vulnerable to the CCP, I recently cosponsored legislation to prohibit the use of TikTok on all federal government-owned devices in the interest of national security.
On the state level, Maryland, Texas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, have already acknowledged the growing national security threat posed by TikTok due to its data gathering operations on behalf of the CCP and have acted in defense of their citizens by banning TikTok from government devices.
That is why I have also joined Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), and the entire Wisconsin Republican Congressional delegation on a letter to Governor Evers urging him to follow the lead of his fellow governors and ban the use of TikTok on government devices in Wisconsin.
