The Trump administration moved to protect Americans’ data privacy in September when it banned Chinese-developed social media apps TikTok and WeChat from U.S. app stores, sparking a debate over national security and free speech.
The U.S. Commerce Department’s order barred all new U.S. downloads of the apps after Sept. 20 and would ban the apps’ functionality beginning on Nov. 12. Ahead of the September announcement, President Donald Trump had argued for weeks that the apps were allowing the Chinese Communist Party to surveil Americans.
“The spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,” Trump said in an August executive order. “At this time, action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application in particular, TikTok.”
As part of his August order, Trump required that TikTok sell its U.S. operations in order to continue operating in the states. Shortly thereafter, American companies Oracle and Walmart negotiated a deal that would ensure them a combined 20% share in TikTok’s parent company, but the deal was canceled after China enacted tougher controls on technology exports. Together, TikTok and WeChat are used by more than 100 million Americans. U.S. security experts and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have voiced concerns that the apps may pose a threat to U.S. national security.
In October 2019, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote a letter to the acting director of National Intelligence expressing their concerns about TikTok. Specifically, they said, Beijing-based technology company ByteDance, which owns the service, “regards its platforms as part of an artificial intelligence company powered by algorithms that ‘learn’ each user’s interests and preferences through repeat interaction.” The senators added that “TikTok’s terms of service and privacy policies describe how it collects data from its users and their devices, including user content and communications, IP address, location-related data, device identifiers, cookies, metadata and other sensitive personal information.”
In their letter, Schumer and Cotton also acknowledged that while TikTok stores U.S. data in the U.S., ByteDance is a Chinese company that must adhere to laws that support intelligence work of the Chinese Communist Party. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Acting Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, emphasized in a September interview with Fox News that Chinese companies must comply with requests from the Chinese Communist Party to provide data. “Any Chinese company that tells you that’s not true is being disingenuous,” Rubio said.
Despite the potential security threats posed by TikTok, several lawmakers and high-ranking security officials were still reportedly using the app as late as October 2020. Ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) used TikTok as part of his reelection campaign, and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) defended his use of the app, telling CQ in May, “It’s not like I’m doing some high-level counterintelligence through TikTok.”
For its part, TikTok announced it was disappointed in the Trump administration’s decision, which the company called unfair for Americans. “We will continue to challenge the unjust executive order, which was enacted without due process and threatens to deprive the American people and small businesses across the U.S. of a significant platform for both a voice and livelihoods,” TikTok spokesman Josh Gartner said in a statement.
Some security experts said the security risk from the apps was relatively minor compared with the amount of data China could have access to from large hacks, like those on the White House Office of Management and Budget and credit reporting agency Equifax. Others in the tech industry spoke out against the ban as well. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, tweeted that “a U.S. TikTok ban would be quite bad for Instagram, Facebook and the internet more broadly.”
Days after the Commerce Department’s announcement in September, a U.S. District Court judge in D.C. issued an injunction against the ban on new TikTok downloads, and a similar court order blocked the ban on WeChat. The U.S. Justice Department, however, appealed the D.C. judge’s ruling in October. It is unknown when the court will act on the federal government’s appeal.
For more background, see the January 2020 issue of Congressional Digest on “Holding Tech Companies Accountable.”
