Some in the government, and many outside of it, have been concerned for some years that the internet application TikTok, which is widely used in the United States, could allow the CCP to amass a staggering amount of data on US residents and their activities. That’s because the company is a Chinese company and is subject to regulation by the Chinese government/CCP. As we know, neither freedom nor privacy is a favorable term to that regime. Almost immediately after it went global in 2018, first India and then the United States had security concerns about the app. You can find a brief history of TikTok here.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the RESTRICT Act (S. 686) on March 7, and it should be dead in the water. Many have commented that it is a travesty of bureaucratic overreach that effectively cripples the First Amendment. In Section 3(a)(1)(C), “interfering in a Federal election” is identified as a violation but not further defined. If it were to become law, I would fear a J6-like prosecution on steroids of everyone using an iPhone to try to make elections more secure.

Other bills are much more sensible about protecting America from the CCP using TikTok as a Trojan Horse. The No TikTok on United States Devices Act (S. 85), which Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced on January 25, is much abbreviated and narrowly targeted. On the same day, Ken Buck (R-CO) introduced an identical bill (HR 503). Senator Hawley has received some push-back from other members concerned that banning TikTok would also be restricting freedom of expression. There are definitely problems with it, but it's not as bad as the RESTRICT Act.

Image by Andrea Widburg.

Given that Americans have a multitude of available social media platforms and that most of them can be monetized like TikTok, banning the app in the United States for security reasons would pose no threat to First Amendment rights, provided users were given some time to prepare for the app’s unavailability. However, it should not be incumbent upon each of the app’s tens of millions of users to delete it.

If Congress, the White House, and the Intelligence Community have determined that TikTok poses a security threat of such grave nature, then go ahead and ban it. It should be easy enough to mandate that it be removed from all government devices, except those for which a clear security purpose exists.

It seems it would also be easy enough simply to prohibit all FCC licensees from providing access to the app via any of their services, hardware, software, transmission lines, satellites, or other components. Make the fine a million dollars a day per violation, and service providers will make sure it’s out of their systems. If a clone pops up a year later, amend the bill to include the clone.

One final question: Has China embedded itself so deeply into our communications services infrastructure that even without TikTok, the CCP already has easy access to the same information and material? I’m years away from dealing with the high techy techy world and have no idea. Perhaps Congress, the Administration, and the IC should focus on the possibly very uncomfortable answer to this question before proceeding further with these bills.

Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant.