Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a Feb. 12 interview that lawmakers should consider a countrywide TikTok ban.
Schumer’s comments came during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”
“It’s something that should be looked at,” Schumer said of a potential ban on the app.
“We do know there’s Chinese ownership of the company that owns TikTok. And there are some people in the Commerce Committee that are looking into that right now. We’ll see … where they come out.”
The Senate leader’s comments came after a number of states have taken steps to ban the app from being used on state-issued devices.
At the end of January, Maine became the 29th U.S. state to ban TikTok from the devices of government employees, and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced plans to make his state the 30th to pass such a law.
A bipartisan coalition of senators presented legislation to ban the application in the United States, citing worries that it may be used to spy on Americans.
Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March.
The committee says that he will discuss “TikTok’s consumer privacy and data security practices, the platforms’ impact on kids, and their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced the legislation in December and has since encouraged lawmakers to work quickly to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from stealing more Americans’ data and further undermining U.S. national security, as The Epoch Times previously reported.
The legislation was reintroduced in February of this year and Rubio said in a prepared statement, “TikTok allows the Chinese Communist Party to access people’s private data. This is a direct threat not only to our national security interests but also to the American people.
“I’m proud to continue to lead the bipartisan fight in Congress to ban TikTok, as well as other social media companies that are controlled by the CCP, so long as they are under dangerous foreign ownership.”
The legislation is titled, “Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act,” or “ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act.”
If enacted, it would block and prohibit transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China, Russia, and several other foreign countries of concern, unless they became fully divested of dangerous foreign ownership.
