On Sunday US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said lawmakers will move forward with legislation to address national security worries about TikTok.
“It’s very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know to be true—China has access to TikTok user data,” McCarthy wrote in a tweet on Sunday.
Read more: Bill That Aims To Block TikTok Approved By US House Panel
“The House will be moving forward with legislation to protect Americans from the technological tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party.”
In the United States, there are growing calls to ban TikTok, owned by China-based company ByteDance, or to pass bipartisan legislation to give President Joe Biden’s administration legal authority to seek a ban.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before a U.S. House Committee for about five hours on Thursday, and lawmakers from both parties grilled him about national security and other concerns involving the app, which has 150 million American users.
The company says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts under the name “Project Texas” which currently has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and is contracted with Oracle Corp to store TikTok’s U.S. user data.
