Today in a Senate Judiciary hearing, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) challenged TikTok CEO Shou Chew on his app’s monitoring of Americans and its harvesting of their personal data, describing the platform as an espionage arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Every single one of those Americans are in danger from the fact that [TikTok] tracks their keystrokes, [TikTok] tracks their app usage, [TikTok] tracks their location data,”said Senator Hawley. “And we know that all of that information can be accessed by Chinese employees who are subject to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He continued, “Your app […] is subject to the control and inspection of a foreign, hostile government that is actively trying to track the information and whereabouts of every American that they can get their hands on. Your app ought to be banned in the United States of America for the security of this country.”
Click here or above to watch the full exchange.
Senator Hawley has introduced legislation that would ban TikTok in the United States and has gone to the Senate floor to seek a vote on the measure. In December 2022, he successfully enacted into law legislation that would ban the app on federal devices.