NOTICIAS

Washington, D.C. —  U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) released the following statement after the Biden Administration announced it would revoke Trump-era bans on TikTok and WeChat, and order yet another security review.

“The Biden Administration cannot ignore the serious threat to personal privacy and U.S. national security posed by high-risk foreign apps, including Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat,” Rubio said. “A comprehensive policy with serious teeth starts by establishing a framework of standards that must be met before a high-risk, foreign-based app is allowed to operate on American telecommunications networks and devices. If President Biden is serious about protecting Americans’ user data and our security from malicious Chinese apps and software, he should instruct the U.S. Department of Commerce to take the steps outlined in my APP Act.”

In October, Rubio introduced the Adversarial Platform Prevention (APP) Act, which would establish a set of data protection and censorship related standards and restrictions that must be met by high-risk foreign software, like Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat, in order to legally operate in the United States. The APP Act comes after Rubio announced in an op-ed that he would introduce legislation and called on policy makers to “adopt a more expansive approach to protecting data and our national security.” The bill would require a warning label, annual public disclosures, localization requirements for U.S. data, and would remove Section 230 protections for covered high-risk foreign software. A one-pager of the legislation is available here and the text is available here.