US senators unveil bipartisan bill empowering Biden to ban TikTok

White House national security adviser claims bill addresses “technology-based threats” to Americans

March 8, 2023

Bipartisan Senate bill targets TikTok

A group of 12 US Senators, led by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), has unveiled a new bill with White House backing that will give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok nationwide.

The bipartisan bill will empower the US Secretary of Commerce to ban foreign technologies and companies from operating in the US if they threaten national security.

The Warner bill comes just a few days after the House Foreign Affairs Committee pushed through a separate measure to restrict access to TikTok, called the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries Act, or DATA Act.

Called the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, it gives the US government new powers, up to and including a ban, “against foreign-linked producers of electronics or software that the Commerce Department deems to be a national security risk,” as per CNN reports.

The bill covers companies in countries, including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.

“Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S. Before TikTok, however, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks,” Warner said in a statement.

“We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America, so we aren’t playing Whac-A-Mole and scrambling to catch up once they’re already ubiquitous,” he added.

[With Inputs from IANS]

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