Casten Statement on HR 7521
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Congressman Sean Casten (IL-06) has released the following statement after voting to pass H.R. 7521, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act:
“Foreign interference and disinformation campaigns remain two of the gravest threats to American democracy. Ensuring our adversaries abroad don’t have unfettered access to Americans’ data is critical to preventing foreign influence operations from distorting and misleading the American public.
“While I have concerns with the speed with which this was brought to the floor and the failure to include prohibitions against the ability of data brokers to circumvent the protections created by this bill, I have been reassured by Democratic and Republican leadership’s commitment to bring that follow up bill to the floor shortly. Moreover, the highly organized influence campaign mobilized by TikTok against this bill made their capability and malicious intent quite clear. While contrary to their intended purpose, I commend TikTok for making such a strong case in favor of this legislation to protect our democracy from further foreign influence.
“To be clear, this legislation does not ban TikTok. TikTok is a source of entertainment, commerce, and self-expression for many users, and an outright ban would not benefit our community. Instead, it requires TikTok to separate from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which allows the Chinese government to access millions of Americans’ data and potentially exploit TikTok’s data, algorithm, and source code. This poses a significant threat to our national security, and so I voted for this legislation to protect Americans, their privacy, and their data.”
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