TikTok CEO faces question on China's human rights abuses
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was asked difficult questions about TikTok's relationship to China and the way Beijing treats its Uyghur population.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested Chinese Communist Party-linked social media platform TikTok "should be ended one way or another."
During Thursday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the state of American diplomacy, Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck asked Blinken if he believed TikTok is "a threat to United States security."
"I believe that it is, yes," Blinken answered.
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During Thursday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the state of American diplomacy, Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken, pictured above, if he believed TikTok is "a threat to United States security." (CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
"And shouldn't a threat to U.S. security be banned?" Buck responded. "They do it to us. Why don’t we do it to them?"
"It should be ended one way or another, and there are different ways of doing that," Blinken said.
Buck said he appreciated Blinken’s "very clear answer" to his question.
The Colorado Republican also asked Blinken if he supported a ban of TikTok, and Blinken noted there's a State Department ban of the app on agency devices.
Blinken also highlighted the proposal that would have ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, divest the embattled social media platform.
Buck told Fox News Digital he was happy to hear the secretary recognize TikTok as a national security threat.
"TikTok presents a clear privacy, cybersecurity and national security threat to Americans," Buck said. "I was glad to hear Secretary Blinken acknowledge that fact today."
TikTok has come under increasing scrutiny as more lawmakers call for a ban of the app that collects data on its users, including keystroke patterns and rhythms, IP addresses, mobile carriers, time zone settings, device models and operating systems and biometric identifiers such as faceprints and voiceprints.
The information allows TikTok to target videos, ads and political messages based on habits and interests.
Additionally, the CCP-linked app collects users' ages, usernames, email addresses, passwords, phone numbers and locations. It also gathers the content of messages, when they're sent, received and read and by whom. It also collects payment information, including payment card numbers, billing and shipping addresses and file names and types, among other data.
Buck told Fox News Digital he was happy to hear the secretary recognize TikTok as a national security threat. (Getty Images)
Jamal Brown, who served as one of three national press secretaries for President Biden's 2020 campaign and later served as a spokesperson at the Pentagon, took a job at TikTok in November.
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In recent days, Brown has been retweeting and sharing quotes from TikTok influencers who have voiced opposition to banning the CCP-linked app. Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, the chair of the House Select Committee on China, told DailyMail.com last year Brown's hiring "is a shocking example of how the CCP uses the swamp against us."
"Given the threat TikTok poses to user privacy and the potential for its algorithm to be manipulated by the CCP at any point to influence American public opinion, we need to ban the app before it is too late," Gallagher said.
Fox News Digital's William La Jeunesse and Danielle Wallace contributed reporting.
