US lawmakers will include a proposal to bar federal government employees from using Chinese app TikTok on government-owned devices in a key spending bill, sources told Reuters on Monday.
The Senate last week voted on a bill sponsored by Republican Senator Josh Hawley to bar federal employees from using the ByteDance-owned short video app on government-owned devices.
It was the latest action by US lawmakers to crack down on Chinese companies amid national security fears. The ban is set to be included in a massive omnibus measure to fund US government operations, the sources said.
Last month, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) indicated "a preliminary range of fines" to be imposed on the Irish arm of TikTok, concerning its investigation into how the social media giant processes children’s data.
The findings of a draft decision by the DPC to impose the range of fines is disclosed in new accounts for TikTok Technology Ltd which show that pre-tax profits at the Dublin based company last year increased 18-fold to $18 million (€17.85 million) as the business ramped up its operations here.
