The U.S. Senate passed a bill that would ban TikTok on government devices after major security concerns were raised, Fox Business reported.
Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Rick Scott (R-FL) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), sponsored the bill, which passed unanimously Wednesday.
“TikTok is a Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a major security risk to the United States, and until it is forced to sever ties with China completely, it has no place on government devices,” Hawley said in a statement. “States across the U.S. are banning TikTok on government devices. It’s time for Joe Biden and the Democrats to help do the same.”
TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas said that the company won’t share data and that users’ data is protected during a September Senate hearing.
“We will never share data, period,” Pappas said.
A similar measure passed the Senate in 2020 was not taken up by the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Senate’s action comes after North Dakota and Iowa this week joined a growing number of U.S. states in banning TikTok, owned by ByteDance, from state-owned devices amid concerns that data could be passed on to the Chinese government, reported Reuters.
