Reuters, WASHINGTON – A plan in the U.S. House of Representatives that would require Chinese-based ByteDance to give up the short video app TikTok or risk being banned from the country is unlawful, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will take a vote on the bipartisan proposal, whose supporters claim that their efforts are driven by worries about national security.
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said, “We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year.”
The group highlighted a U.S. judge’s decision from November that struck down Montana’s state ban on the grounds of free speech.
