A new law seeking Chinese divestment of TikTok is unlikely to survive scrutiny if challenged for reasons similar to those that blocked Montana’s ban against the app, free speech experts tell us.
Karl Herchenroeder
Karl Herchenroeder, Associate Editor, is a technology policy journalist for publications including Communications Daily. Born in Rockville, Maryland, he joined the Warren Communications News staff in 2018. He began his journalism career in 2012 at the Aspen Times in Aspen, Colorado, where he covered city government. After that, he covered the nuclear industry for ExchangeMonitor in Washington. You can follow Herchenroeder on Twitter: @karlherk
TikTok will challenge the newly approved “unconstitutional” law forcing ByteDance to sell the platform, it said in a statement Wednesday as President Joe Biden signed the measure.
Forcing ByteDance to divest TikTok is the right move and will withstand legal challenges, Senate Democrats and Republicans told us Tuesday as the chamber cleared the first procedural hurdle in approving the provision in the FY 2024 national security appropriations supplemental package (see 2404220049 and 2404190042).
The House on Friday voted 316-94 to advance a foreign aid package, setting up a Saturday vote on four bills, including one that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok.
Congress should eliminate the FCC’s data breach notification authority and instead allow the FTC to regulate through a federal privacy law, a privacy-focused telecom association told House Commerce Committee members Wednesday (see 2404160034).
Privacy legislation proposed by Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has "no chance of passing," ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told us last week. Cantwell said she supports the bill as written and is encouraged to see the House Commerce Committee moving toward a markup on the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA).
The House on Friday voted to renew the intelligence community’s foreign surveillance authority for two years (see 2404100069). The vote was 273-147, with 147 Democrats and 126 Republicans in favor. An amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act narrowly failed 212-212, with 128 Republicans and 84 Democrats voting in favor.
House Commerce Committee members on Thursday vowed to find a bipartisan solution for updating Communications Decency Act Section 230.
Copyright concerns related to AI can be addressed using existing law and litigation, so Congress should avoid new legislation, legal experts told the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee during a hearing Wednesday.
The House Commerce Committee plans to mark up a bipartisan, bicameral privacy bill this month, Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., announced Sunday in a draft bill agreement with Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.