"U.S Senate approves bill to ban TikTok"

" \r\n\r\n U.S Senate approves bill to ban TikTok \r\n\r\n \r\nThe U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to approve a bill that would ban\u00a0TikTok\u00a0nationwide unless Chinese parent company\u00a0 ByteDance \u00a0sells its stake in the popular app.\r\n\r\nThe development will likely result in a court battle between the U.S. and TikTok, which argues that the legislation violates the First Amendment \u2014 and if TikTok loses that fight, there\u2019s a real chance it could be shut off for Americans.\r\n\r\nThe bill now moves to the desk of President Biden, a supporter of the TikTok divest-or-ban measure who has said he will sign it into law. U.S. lawmakers have expressed deep concern about TikTok\u2019s Chinese ownership, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime could use the app to spy on Americans or use it to promulgate pro-China propaganda.\r\n\r\nThe Senate approval of the TikTok ban bill was tied to a $95 billion package of foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.\r\n\r\nThe Senate, by a 79-18 vote, OK\u2019d the bundled legislation after the House passed the resolutions Saturday and sent them on an expedited basis to the Senate for approval on an up-or-down vote.\r\n\r\n TikTok will file a legal challenge once the bill is signed into law , Michael Beckerman, TikTok\u2019s head of public policy for the Americas, wrote in a memo to company staff over the weekend.\r\n\r\nThe legislation is a \u201cclear violation\u201d of the First Amendment, the exec wrote: \u201cThis is the beginning, not the end of this long process.\u201d Beckerman also criticized the TikTok divest-or-ban measure as \u201can unprecedented deal worked out between the Republican Speaker [Mike Johnson] and President Biden.\u201d\r\n\r\nAhead of the vote, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delivered comments on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon about the national security threats posed by ByteDance\u2019s ownership of TikTok.\r\n\r\nPassage of the bill \u201cgoes a long way towards safeguarding our democratic systems from covert foreign influence,\u201d he said, saying that Chinese companies like ByteDance \u201cdon\u2019t owe their obligation to their customers, or their shareholders, but they owe it to the PRC [People\u2019s Republic of China] government.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is not an effort to take your voice away\u2026 \u00a0I would emphasize\u00a0this is not a ban of the service you appreciate,\u201d Warner said, addressing TikTok users. Regular Americans aren\u2019t privy to classified briefings members of Congress have received about TikTok from intelligence services and the risks it poses as an entity \u201coperating at the direction of a foreign adversary,\u201d Warner said.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe hope that TikTok will continue under new ownership \u2014 American or otherwise. It could be bought by a group from Britain, Canada, Brazil, France. It just needs to no longer be controlled by an adversary that is defined as an adversary in U.S. law.\u201d\r\n\r\nSen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate\u2019s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee,\u00a0suggested TikTok and ByteDance are \u201cweaponizing\u201d data and AI to spy on American citizens, the military and government personnel, including journalists covering the company. (In 2022, ByteDance said it\u00a0 fired four employees for \u201cmisconduct\u201d after the company found they accessed TikTok data on several users , including two reporters.)\r\n\r\nSen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) spoke out against the TikTok ban bill before the final vote, saying the more pressing \u201cclear and present danger\u201d is the harm kids face from social media apps more broadly, including from U.S.-based companies.\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t deny that TikTok poses some national security risks,\u201d Markey said. \u201cTikTok has its problems. No. 1, TikTok poses a serious risk to the privacy and mental health of our young people.\u201d But he said the bill likely would result in \u201cwidespread censorship,\u201d and he suggested that the bill\u2019s supporters object to liberal political viewpoints popular on TikTok.\r\n\r\n\u201cInstead of suppressing speech on a single application, we could be addressing the root of the mental health crisis by targeting Big Tech\u2019s pernicious, privacy-invasion business model of teenagers and children in our country,\u201d Markey said.\r\n\r\nTikTok has said the bill, if it becomes law, would infringe the free-speech rights of its 170 million U.S. users and \u201cdevastate\u201d the estimated 7 million American businesses on the platform. It claims TikTok contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy annually.\r\n\r\nThe TikTok divest-or-ban legislation has been opposed by the ACLU and other advocacy groups.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is still nothing more than an unconstitutional ban in disguise,\u201d Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement Tuesday prior to the Senate vote. \u201cBanning a social media platform that hundreds of millions of Americans use to express themselves would have devastating consequences for all of our First Amendment rights, and will almost certainly be struck down in court.\u201d\r\n\r\nBecause of its Chinese ties, TikTok has been a political football in the United States for years, as well as in other countries (including India, where\u00a0 it\u2019s been banned since June 2020 ).\r\n\r\nTikTok has prevailed in challenging other laws in the U.S. seeking to ban the app. Last December, a\u00a0 federal judge blocked\u00a0Montana\u2019s first-of-its-kind statewide ban of TikTok , ruling that the law likely violated the First Amendment.\r\n\r\nAn attempt by the Trump administration to\u00a0 force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban also was found unconstitutional by federal courts on First Amendment grounds.\r\n\r\nUnder the \u201cProtecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act\u201d bill, Apple and Google\u2019s app stores and web hosting services in the U.S. would be barred from hosting any \u201cforeign adversary controlled application.\u201d\r\n\r\nSpecifically, it would prohibit distribution of TikTok unless ByteDance divests its ownership in the app within nine months of becoming law, with an additional 90-day extension possible at the president\u2019s discretion if \u201ca path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified.\u201d\r\n\r\nJohnson, the House speaker, incorporated the TikTok ban (revised with the extended divestiture timeline) into the emergency supplemental appropriations bill in a bid to win Republican support for the package of foreign aid.\r\n\r\nBackers of the TikTok bill argue that it doesn\u2019t restrict free speech, saying it only requires apps to be owned by a company that isn\u2019t subject to the control of an adversarial foreign government.\r\n\r\nAs a precedent, the legislation\u2019s proponents point to the 2020 sale of the dating app Grindr by Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. to a group of U.S.-based investors, a transaction forced by the U.S. government over concerns about the privacy of the app\u2019s users.\r\n\r\nPer the text of the bill, legal challenges to the \u201cProtecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act\u201d may be filed only in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.\r\n\r\nIf TikTok is unsuccessful in getting the divest-or-ban law overturned, it is unlikely that ByteDance would sell its ownership stake \u2014 and that the app would effectively become outlawed in the U.S.\r\n\r\nChinese officials have\u00a0 said the government would \u201cfirmly oppose\u201d any forced sale of TikTok, which would represent a technology export and be subject to the government\u2019s approval.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou\u2019re not going to be able to force ByteDance to divest,\u201d James Lewis, SVP at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,\u00a0 told \u00a0the New York Times last month."

"U.S Senate approves bill to ban TikTok"

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