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“You want to give people tools that they can use and you want to set parameters that give somebody the oversight,” Cantwell told reporters after a committee meeting.
The proposal would mark a major new entrant in the congressional debate over TikTok, which lawmakers have claimed poses security risks because its parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. TikTok has disputed the claims and has proposed changes to its operations to assuage concerns from the Biden administration that China could use the app to seize Americans’ data.
As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Cantwell could control the fate of a separate proposal that would give the Commerce Department a more direct route to ban TikTok, known as the Restrict Act. The White House has endorsed the bipartisan bill, led by Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), but some House Republicans have criticized the measure on grounds it gives the Biden administration too much power to decide which apps to restrict or prohibit.
Cantwell said her office thinks Warner’s bill “needs work,” and argued her approach would strike a better balance between giving the White House more tools while creating new oversight mechanisms. She submitted an initial version of the bill as an amendment to the Senate’s sprawling defense policy bill to kick off negotiations, she noted, but it has not been finalized.
“Senator Warner welcomes the opportunity to work with the leadership of the Senate Commerce Committee to address threats from foreign-based technology,” Warner spokeswoman Rachel Cohen said in an email.
The Cantwell amendment urges the White House to “undertake a rulemaking process to protect United States data linked to sensitive populations that could be exploited by foreign adversaries” and tasks the Commerce Department with taking steps “to identify, assess, and mitigate risks to the information and communications technology and services supply chain in the United States.”
A Senate Commerce aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal, said the measure will not seek to directly ban TikTok but rather tackle national security risks more broadly without running afoul of the First Amendment.
The aide said committees, including Commerce and Senate Intelligence, which Warner chairs, would likely have an oversight under the framework, and that Cantwell has been in discussions with Warner’s office and the Biden administration over the measure.
TikTok and civil liberties advocates have argued that a ban against the app would violate consumers’ free speech rights, and they warn that attempts to boot it from the U.S. or to spin it off from ByteDance — which the Trump administration attempted — would run into major constitutional hurdles in the courts.
Meanwhile, other lawmakers, including Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), have introduced bills that seek to more explicitly ban TikTok, mentioning the company by name in the legislative text.
Cantwell said her committee will likely turn to considering the matter when Congress returns after August recess.
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