By: Wall Street Journal
Date: February 2, 2022
The Biden administration is moving to revise federal rules to address potential security risks from TikTok and other foreign-owned apps, eight months after opting not to pursue a forced shutdown of the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform.
The Commerce Department recently concluded a public-comment period on the proposed rule change, which would expand federal oversight to explicitly include apps that could be used by “foreign adversaries to steal or otherwise obtain data,” according to a filing in the Federal Register.
Under the rule, the commerce secretary could effectively bar foreign apps deemed unacceptable security risks. That could force social-media platforms such as TikTok and other software applications connected to the internet to submit to third-party auditing, source-code examination and monitoring of the logs that show user data, according to the proposed rule.