A Republican-led House panel voted to advance a bill that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok. Chris Pierson, the founder and CEO of BlackCloak, joined Cheddar News to discuss how the process could affect other businesses.

A Republican-led House panel voted to advance a bill that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok. founder and CEO of BlackCloak, joined Cheddar News to discuss how the process could affect other businesses.

Closing Bell

The Fate of TikTok in the U.S.

Well we might be one step closer to seeing a potential nationwide ban of Tiktok after a Republican led House panel voted to advance a bill that would give president biden the power to ban the chinese owned social media app across the US along with any other app that the president deems to be a threat to national security. So if the bill passes Congress it would have far ranging effects on privacy, national security and international relations, especially with china. So I'm joined now by chris Pearson founder and ceo of black cloak, a privacy protection platform. He's also a former member of the Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity committee chris it's good to have you on the show. And what would it mean if this bill were to pass Congress? Yeah. So they're deterring America's technological adversaries act or so called data act really would prevent US citizens from engaging in transactions with any business that the Treasury Secretary determines to knowingly provide or transfer sensitive personal data of U. S. Persons to businesses, organizations that are owned by chinese companies or subject to the laws of china. So really broad and over sweeping. It's not just an issue for potentially Tiktok but one that could be affecting other apps, other businesses and other international commerce that we have with china. Well, chris, with your background, the concerns that we've seen levied against Tiktok for safety and national security reasons. Do you think that they're warranted? Well, I mean it really depends, there's a few different items here first. You know, the U. S. Cyber security team for Tiktok is you know, they have extreme professionals, there no a lot of them protecting that data that they haven't hold. It still doesn't remove the risk of Tiktok us entity being owned by bike dancer Foreign corporation headquartered in china. That has to pay attention to the rules. Some of the biggest impacts that there are potentially with foreign owned applications are going to be for high, high profile persons, national Security intelligence professionals and the use of applications on their government owned devices. That's probably gonna be the biggest risk. And a lot of that can be dealt with through the agencies. If it's a government owned device, the agency can go ahead and ask them, tell them to not put Tiktok on their devices. In terms of personal devices, there are risks in terms of GPS and location tracking and other things. But quite honestly, the whole purpose of Tiktok is to go ahead and publish things publicly to go ahead and show what you're doing. And so the everyday risks that an average day consumer gonna have are not really as high hmm. Well, do you think chris this move, the continuing pushback concerns that we continue to cover on a daily basis coming out of D. C. And elsewhere around Tiktok make the U. S. Is already fraught and contentious relationship with china even more tricky. It is, it is, I mean, at the end of the day, you're looking at a number of things, you have some issues in terms of within the U. S. In terms of First Amendment having a law that is potentially massively overbroad and what that means for the consumer population. Second in terms of international relations it is a really really slippery slope. What else is going to be swept up in terms of chinese applications? You know, Wechat alipay QQ wall. There are a number of different applications that are made in china that have chinese company ownership. What are the other impacts we can have their what are just the overall impacts that it has in terms of US chinese relations. Overall those are probably at an all time low. And what else does that have and hold for other foreign countries in terms of their interactions and their economics in terms of developing apps that are more wide scale, more broad for many people to consume, not just those within their country, chris will be following it closely. Thanks for your time. That's Chris Pearson, founder and Ceo black cloak of privacy protection platform