Will Philippines’ proposed TikTok ban address concerns over China or curb free speech?
- The proposed law will empower the president to ban apps that could be used by ‘foreign adversaries’ to threaten national security
- An academic says she is against the TikTok bill as it could open a Pandora’s box of other bans that violate freedom of speech
On Thursday, House deputy majority leader Bienvenido Abante filed a bill proposing a law – or An Act Regulating Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications – that would empower the president to identify countries that are “foreign adversaries of the Philippines” and impose a ban on digital applications that such adversaries could use to “infiltrate” and threaten national security.
Abante’s bill defines a foreign adversary-controlled application as any technology application operated by a company controlled by a foreign adversary.
In the explanatory note of the bill, Abante said “lawmakers and regulators in the West have increasingly expressed concern that TikTok and its [Beijing-based] parent company ByteDance may put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government. They have pointed to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.
