US Senate unanimously passes bill banning TikTok on all government devices

The US Senate unanimously passed a bill Wednesday night that would ban TikTok on government devices following major security concerns about the social media app owned by China-based ByteDance.

Republican Senators Tom Cotton (AK), Josh Hawley (MO), Marco Rubio (FL), and Rick Scott (FL) sponsored the bill.



Hawley said, "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.”

"States across the US are banning TikTok on government devices,” he added. “It’s time for Joe Biden and the Democrats to help do the same."

The move comes after FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a speech at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy on December 2,  that the app is a security concern because Chinese officials have access to the platform which allows them "to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations."

Wray added, "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."

During a September Senate hearing, TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas claimed that user data is protected and that the company will not share data.

An October report by Forbes alleged that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, was planning on using the app to track the whereabouts of "specific" Americans, an accusation that the company has denied.

Concerns regarding the CCP's control of the app date back to the Trump administration, during which time the former president announced that he would ban the app in the US and attempted to demand that ByteDance sell the platform to an American company. The Biden administration revoked Trump's attempted ban.