Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Newsmax on Thursday that banning TikTok, as the House just voted to do, is not the answer to countering Communist China and is likely to open a Pandora's box of surveillance for Americans.
"I'll just give you a couple of ways that it could begin," Biggs said during an appearance on Newsmax's "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE." "One of them is how you qualify to be the divestiture. So, in paragraph six, A and B, it gives that authority to the executive branch, particularly focusing on the president. So, the president's getting hashed and trashed on TikTok over his economy, for instance. That's something that affects his narrative, it affects the vote. So, he can determine who's going to buy TikTok. So, he could actually buy a company that is going to censor and turn the censor the other way, the narrative the other way, so that's one way and that's just the beginning of it.
"The other thing that's out there is you actually have, as you say, this data is available right now, through data brokers all over the place," he continued. "They [the Chinese] like TikTok, because they've got algorithms they're gonna tie into and all that – it's easier – but they can still buy the data. And so if you really wanted to get at the data, if it was really a data issue, you would be saying you own your data, nobody can sell your data without your permission. It's a private property right, and we're gonna give you a private property right of action against any of these data brokers that gather and harvest your data and sell it. How about doing that?"
The bill passed by the House on Wednesday doesn't outright ban TikTok but would lead to a ban of the popular video app if its China-based owner does not sell. Passed by a vote of 352-65, the bill now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain.
With more than 150 million American users, TikTok is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology company ByteDance Ltd., and has raised alarm among lawmakers for potentially being beholden to the Chinese government.
"They [the federal government] can put a company in there who will cooperate and give all of that data to the federal government now," Biggs said. "It will expand the encroachment of the surveillance state and that's what I see as a huge problem here."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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