By Matthew Kaufman
Staff Writer
The Biden Administration is considering new rules that would expand government oversight of apps developed by foreign companies, such as TikTok and WeChat, after deciding in June to rescind the Trump Administration’s attempt to ban the apps, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The proposed policy is currently under review by the Commerce Department and would allow Gina Raimondo, the U.S. secretary of commerce, to review apps that could be used by “foreign adversaries to steal or otherwise obtain data,” according to the Federal Register. If an app was found to be a security risk, the developer could be forced to submit to a third-party audit of the app’s source code and data collection.
Saloni Sharma, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, told the Washington Post that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which examines how foreign business impacts national security, was already conducting a review of TikTok and its connections to the Chinese government.
“The Biden administration believes certain countries, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), seek to leverage digital technologies and Americans’ data in ways that present unacceptable national security risks while advancing authoritarian controls and interests,” Sharma said.
Former President Trump issued an executive order in Aug. 2020 that would ban TikTok and WeChat from operating in the U.S. unless they were sold to a domestic company, but the order was struck down by courts, according to Barron’s. The Biden administration chose not to appeal the rulings, instead initiating a review of the apps’ security risks in June 2020.
The new rules are designed to withstand the types of court challenges that doomed the Trump administration's bans of the apps, Paul Triolo, senior vice president at Albright Stonebridge, a strategic advisory firm, told Barron’s.
“Any new attempt to ban these apps in the U.S. is likely to fail, so the administration and the Commerce Department are attempting to find an approach short of banning but which provides some new assurances around how the parent company running these apps handles U.S. citizen data,” Tedford said.
According to the Post, TikTok has repeatedly denied that it shares any data about its American users with the Chinese Communist Party and has said that its servers are located in Virginia and are inaccessible to Chinese officials.
CTIA, a trade group representing wireless-communications companies, has also warned that requiring the apps to submit to audits could create “privacy and data-protection” issues, according to the WSJ.
Another complication facing the government as it tries to regulate TikTok is the fact that the app is so widespread and used by millions of Americans. According to the Post, TikTok surpassed Google last year to become the most visited website in the world and now has over 1 billion users.
Patrick Jackson, chief technology officer for security firm Disconnect Inc., told the WSJ that “regular Americans don’t recognize the harm the U.S. government is alleging. They may see [TikTok] similar to Instagram or Snapchat. The onus is on the government to connect the dots.”
According to the WSJ, the proposed rules would only become effective once the Commerce Department concludes its review of public comments regarding the proposal and issues a final ruling.
