Spanberger: U.S. ‘cannot afford to ease our vigilance’ against the Chinese Communist Party

The U.S. House passed legislation in 2020 to ban TikTok on TSA phones and block potential surveillance from the Chinese military and intelligence services.

U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA case officer, sponsored the 2020 legislation and on Friday commented on “disturbing” reports of planned unauthorized surveillance of U.S. residents by TikTok’s parent company.

A new report by Forbes indicates that the Chinese video app TikTok’s parent company ByteDance “planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens… without their knowledge or consent,” according to a press release.

“As a Chinese-owned company, TikTok is required by law to comply with information requests from the Chinese Communist Party. This report reveals a concerted effort to breach the privacy of American citizens, and our government’s alarm bells need to be going off,” Spanberger said in the press release. “As a nation, we cannot afford to ease our vigilance against operations potentially originating from the Chinese Communist Party and the companies that are forced to answer to it. Protecting the data of the American people is a national security priority, and the leadership of TikTok and ByteDance need to present more answers to Congress about the nature of this operation, any new safeguards to protect U.S. consumers, and why this disturbing plan existed in the first place. As a former intelligence officer, I remain concerned about the use of the TikTok app, particularly on government-issued devices — and this report does nothing to assuage my concerns or the concerns of families across the country.”

In March 2020, former President Donald Trump signed into law Spanberger’s Secure 5G and Beyond Act, which protects the integrity of telecommunications networks in the United States from foreign-based threats, including from Huawei and its 5G networks.