Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important we solve the right problem. The gentleman from New Jersey, who isn't actually opposed to the bill, seems to have identified the real issue, which is data privacy. I think it is important that we solve the correct problem.

Our problem with all these companies, social media and otherwise-- your car, your phone, you name it--is surveillance. The spying that goes on of American citizens does need to be addressed, and it should be addressed by the Energy and Commerce Committee.

I have long pleaded with Members of both sides of the aisle to pass H.R. 4639 to reclaim the privacy rights that are so deeply infringed in our country, and by avoiding that problem, we take away the energy and momentum to address the root issue.

Frankly, the people sponsoring this bill today claim that the real issue is ownership.

Nonetheless, who owns this company?

It is not 100 percent owned by ByteDance. Mr. Speaker, 60 percent of it is owned by investors, including American investors; 20 percent is owned by the founders; and 20 percent is owned by employees, over 7,000 employees. The company's headquarters is not in China, it is in Singapore. The American user data isn't housed in China, it is housed in Texas controlled by a database owned by Oracle.

The administration seems to believe that they can ban the export of Americans' sensitive data not just on TikTok but on all platforms because they just issued an executive order banning the export.

Now, I wish this were the bill that Pramila Jayapal and I have sponsored that we were moving, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. It passed Judiciary, but its complement to prevent foreigners from buying it would also address the privacy concerns.

So if we think we can address the privacy concerns, then what is left to address?

Frankly, it is content moderation.

Mr. Speaker, do you remember before Elon Musk bought the crime scene at Twitter? It was all a conspiracy theory that these algorithms were silencing and canceling people. You guys are crazy.

No. When Elon Musk bought Twitter he did keep it operating with 80 percent fewer employees, but what we found is a lot of the employees were trying to do content moderation, shape who sees what and how they see it, which algorithms are used, and how does it promote certain people and filter others.

So, really, Mr. Speaker, what you are saying here is that if you are not fully engaged with America's three-letter agencies in content moderation, we plan to TikTok you.

Moreover, this bill isn't just limited to TikTok. It is a coercive power that can be applied to others, apps like Telegram and TUR. Things that provide privacy would be targeted by this bill--perhaps Tether, one of the things that they can't control as a monetary system.

When you look at companies, Mr. Speaker, if it enables one user to see content that isn't approved, it is subject to a $500 million fine per user.

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Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, this is meant to be able to take out anything, including email where its one user sees it. So it could target an infinite number of companies, but not an infinite number of places.

So, for that, I do applaud the work that was done to back off from the dystopian RESTRICT Act, but this is essentially a downpayment on the RESTRICT Act. I encourage everyone to look up the RESTRICT Act.

This is what the administration really wanted to do. What Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle wanted to do is to create a bigger surveillance state, and that is what the Intel Committee wants to do with FISA, is to make it bigger. We have to shrink it and protect our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

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