House Homeland Security battles over bills addressing TikTok security risk

By Benjamin Cook

The House Committee on Homeland Security fiercely fought over bills on Thursday to address risks posed by foreign apps being used to steal American data.

TikTok was once the new kid on the block of social media, but it has since grown into the most popular app among the youth. Now, TikTok is seen as a national security threat by Congress and is in a precarious position.

House HomeSec preparing to vote to pass DREAM Act

The House Committee on Homeland Security has been debating which bill of a large list to pass. Depending on which, if any, bill proposed this weekend passes, TikTok may end up left alone, restricted, transferred to American ownership, or completely banned for all Americans.

Of the many bills created throughout the sessions, the first to reach a vote was the Keep Data Domestic, or KDD Act. If passed, this would have resulted in the creation of a task force consisting of 100 FBI agents tasked with tracking down stolen data. If companies did not cooperate and delete stolen data, it would result in a ban of the services. After a long debate, the bill did not end up being passed. 

(House voting to start a new motion)

Another major bill is the DREAM Act, focused on aggressive policies with softer punishments. 

The DREAM Act consists of many separate policies combined into a single bill. New York Representative Tim Kennedy (D-NY-26), co-writer of this bill described how the bill consisted of 5 main sections in an interview. One of these sections is about education, where social media apps will be required to “summarize their terms of service in simple language” to keep people safe. Other sections include fining companies that don’t follow new regulations and transferring the power to control apps from the executive to the legislative branch. This bill was the second to reach a vote, and passed with a large majority and an amendment raising the punishment to a higher fine.

There are still many more bills to be proposed, including the Outcompete Don’t Delete Act that would give positive incentives including a 5% tax cut and a $10 million grant to companies to transfer to America instead of just punishing those who don’t listen to demands. The AAFAA is another proposed bill that would divest foreign social media companies and transfer them to American companies. 

The TAT is a proposed bill that is written by the same representatives who wrote the “Keep Data Domestic” bill. During an interview, Colorado Representative Jason Crow (D-CO-06) described how they “previously tried to pass a bill to return all US data to US servers, [...] but it failed.” He then described how the new bill is based around the “transparency” of TikTok to its users. This new bill is intended to change some ads on TikTok into messages stating what may happen with the data taken by TikTok. Multiple other groups of representatives are still working on creating their own bills as well.

TikTok is now seen as a threat to the security of the United States. Because of this, numerous bills are in the works in House Homeland Security, and multiple have already reached their conclusion. TikTok is already going to be facing restrictions due to the passing of the DREAM Act, and the remaining bills may end up placing it in an even more risky position. Millions of TikTok users across the US are now at risk of losing access to the popular app.