Senate Bill Seeks To Ban Federal Employees From Using TikTok On Their Work Phones

Federal employees might soon be barred from installing the app TikTok on their work phones, if a newly proposed Senate bill is passed. Concerns about the app’s connections to the Chinese government have lawmakers worried about security among government workers.

Senators Josh Hawley, R-Miss., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., introduced a bill together Thursday dubbed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act. They argued that the use of TikTok by federal workers would be a “risk to our networks and a threat to our national security.”

“As many of our federal agencies have already recognized, TikTok is a major security risk to the United States, and it has no place on government devices,” Hawley said.

TikTok is a video creation and sharing app that has seen its popularity grow swiftly over the past year, particularly among young users. The app is owned by ByteDance, a company Hawley said is obligated to share users’ data with the Chinese government. The company has denied such ties, but clearly not everyone is convinced.

The operators of TikTok were forced to pay almost $6 million last year after the Federal Trade Commission accused the app, then known as Musical.ly, of breaching laws intended to protect minors’ privacy.

Hawley held a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, which touched on the issues of app usage and user privacy. Representatives from TikTok were asked to testify but ultimately declined to appear, no doubt serving to push Hawley to draft and unveil this week’s bill.

The Senate isn’t the only government body taking aim at the video app. Last week, a Democrat-sponsored bill with similar aims passed in the House.

Various government agencies, including the Defense Department, have also taken their own steps to discourage or outright ban the use of TikTok by employees. In December, the Pentagon called on all workers to delete the app from their work phones and encouraged them to do the same on their private phones. The Transportation Security Administration has also taken similar steps.