Senator Rand Paul blocks fast-track bill to ban TikTok

Republican Senator Rand Paul on Wednesday blocked a proposal to expedite a legislative ban on TikTok, a popular Chinese social network used by more than 150 million Americans. Rand Paul raised concerns about free speech and unequal treatment from social media companies.
“I think we should be wary of those who use fear to convince Americans to give up our freedoms,” Paul said in a speech to the Senate. “All of the data collection allegations that have been attributed to TikTok can also be attributed to large national tech companies.”
Republican Senator Josh Hawley previously asked his colleagues to unanimously pass a bill to ban TikTok.
“It will protect the American people and make Communist China realize that you can’t buy us out,” Hawley said, adding that the app snoops on Americans.
“If Republicans want to consistently lose elections for a generation, they should pass this legislation to ban TikTok, the social media app used by 150 million people, mostly young Americans,” Rand Paul told the Senate. – Do we really want to imitate Chinese prohibitions of expression? Are we going to do like China and ban the speeches we fear?
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last week that he expects the House of Representatives to pass the TikTok bill, but the timing remains uncertain. It’s also unclear what the final bill to ban TikTok might look like.
A small but growing number of Democrats and Republicans are expressing concern about the bill, citing free speech and other issues, and opposing the overbroad anti-TikTok bill.
TikTok CEO Show Tzu Chu addressed Congress last week and answered tough questions about national security concerns about an app owned by Chinese company ByteDance.
On Friday, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke out against the TikTok ban by posting a video to her social media account, calling it “unprecedented” and saying Congress hasn’t received any information. secrets on TikTok. “It doesn’t suit me,” she said.
Last week, three Democrats in the House of Representatives opposed banning TikTok. The measure was also opposed by free speech groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration demanded that Chinese owners of TikTok give up their stakes or face a US ban on the social network. President Donald Trump’s 2020 attempts to ban TikTok have been blocked in federal courts. TikTok says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on strict data security measures and denies spying claims.
Many Democrats argue that Congress should enact comprehensive user data privacy legislation covering all social networks, not just TikTok.
The current Senate bill was sponsored by Democrat Mark Warner and Republican John Thune, joined by 22 other senators. They propose giving the Department of Commerce the power to impose restrictions, up to and including a ban on TikTok and other technologies that pose national security risks. This applies to foreign technology from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.
Paul said the bill would “essentially give the president unlimited power to suppress speech.”
A growing number of Conservatives oppose the bill. Former Congressman Justin Amash said, “This bill is not about banning TikTok, it’s about controlling you. It gives broad executive powers with few checks and will abuse it in every way you can imagine.”
A spokesperson for Senator Warner said: “To be very clear, this law is aimed directly at companies like Kaspersky Lab, Huawei and TikTok that pose systemic risks to the national security of the United States, not at users. individual”.