On Monday night, the White House ordered federal institutions to ensure that TikTok is not installed on their officials’ phones within 30 days, consistent with a law President Joe Biden signed into law in early January. .
Olivia Dalton, White House deputy press secretary, said the administration “will continue to consider other possible steps … including how to work with Congress on this matter in the future.”
A House committee will vote Tuesday on a Republican-backed bill that would give Biden the authority to completely ban TikTok in the United States.
Then it would have to be approved by both houses, however the measures against China are one of the few issues that unite the right and the left in Congress.
The ACLU civil rights association opposes this law, considering that it would “censor a platform” and “deprive Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of expression,” according to one of its lawyers, Jenna Leventoff, quoted in a statement. release.
For months, TikTok has been awaiting the results of a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a government agency that assesses the risk of any foreign investment to the country’s national security.
“The fastest and most effective way to address these concerns (…) is for CFIUS to adopt the proposed agreement on which we have worked with them for almost two years,” the spokesperson added, noting that TikTok had already begun to implement several points of the agreement to “secure” the platform in the United States.
The European Commission and the Government of Canada recently made similar decisions for the mobile phones of their officials.
