The Chinese spy balloon is bad, but the Chinese spyware app is still worse
Zachary Faria
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Another Democratic senator on the Senate Intelligence Committee has raised the issue of banning TikTok. With a suspected Chinese spy balloon flying over Montana, perhaps now would be the time for all of our politicians finally to clamp down on Chinese spyware.
On Thursday, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) sent a letter to Apple and Google urging them to remove TikTok from their app stores. “Like most social media platforms, TikTok collects vast and sophisticated data from its users, including faceprints and voiceprints,” Bennet wrote. “Unlike most social media platforms, TikTok poses a unique concern because Chinese law obligates ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent, to ‘support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.'”
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Bennet joins Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) in support of banning the app. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is also weighing a bill to ban TikTok in the U.S. after the House joined several state governments in banning the app from government-owned devices.
Again, TikTok is an app that takes more data than any other social media app and sends it directly to the Chinese Communist Party on command. The app has been caught bypassing protections on the Google and Apple app stores, logging the keystrokes of users, and using the app to track the locations of American journalists. It should have been banned when Trump brought up the possibility two years ago.
But Democrats weren’t interested in that then, instead using the app to campaign during the midterm elections. Now that the elections are over, the reality of just how serious it is for a Chinese spyware app to be on the devices of some 80 million Americans is finally setting in.
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Perhaps a Chinese spy balloon casually floating over U.S. soil may be the push Democrats (and any uninspired Republicans) need finally to take action on TikTok. Or perhaps enough politicians will lounge about, waiting for TikTok’s CEO to speak to Congress on March 23, and then lounge around some more and allow another few tens of millions of Americans to install Chinese spyware on their phones in the meantime.