Daniel Savickas writes about why the Open App Markets Act would be bad for security:
Naturally, American lawmakers are trying to sew up potential vulnerabilities to prevent further attacks. One such vulnerability, on which several elected officials have focused, is TikTok: the popular, video-based, social-media company. This comes after a recent report alleged TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, shares U.S. user data with the Chinese government. One lawmaker who has sounded the alarm is Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), saying, “[TikTok] is both a national security threat and a surveillance threat to millions of Americans.”
This is ironic, as Blackburn is one of the lead sponsors of the Open App Markets Act (OAMA), which would make it more difficult for major American tech companies to isolate TikTok, should it become seen as representing such a threat. OAMA would make it presumptively illegal for app-store providers — like Apple or Google — to prevent applications from being downloaded to their devices.
Read the whole thing here.