A panel of US legislators voted Wednesday to approve legislation that would make it easier to ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, despite warnings that the measure would jeopardize freedom of speech.

The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the Deterring America's Technological Adversaries (DATA) Act on a party-line vote, but it will meet criticism from free speech advocates and Democrats when it comes up for votes in the full House and Senate.

"My bill mandates the administration to ban TikTok or any software applications that threaten US national security," said the committee's chairman Michael McCaul.

"And make no mistake -- TikTok is a security threat. It allows (China) to manipulate and monitor its users while it gobbles up Americans' data to be used for their malign activities," he added.

By providing an exception for "sensitive personal data," the measure seeks to challenge a 1980s amendment that barred the government from blocking the free flow of visual entertainment between foreign countries.

It calls for the administration to apply penalties, including bans, on companies found to have knowingly provided TikTok user data to "any foreign individual."

According to a TikTok representative, the firm is "disappointed to see this rushed piece of legislation move forward" in Congress.

"A US ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide," Spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union stated in a letter to the committee on Monday that the proposal would violate the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans.

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The big picture

In December 2022, following "concerns" from the FBI director and cybersecurity experts that China may exploit the social media platform, TikTok, for allegedly spying on US citizens, Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a bipartisan pair of congressmen in the House proposed a bill that would prohibit TikTok in the United States.

The bill, according to the statement, would "protect Americans by blocking and prohibiting all transactions from any social media company in, or under the influence of, China, Russia, and several other foreign countries of concern."

The bill will also explicitly designate TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, as social media firms for the purposes of the legislation.

The US actions contrast with the protracted discussions that TikTok has had with the US government for years over a potential agreement that may enable the company to handle national security issues and to continue providing services to US consumers.

It's noteworthy that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned, in November, equipment authorizations for video surveillance equipment or telecoms manufactured by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE, calling them "a threat to national security."

According to the order, the restriction builds on efforts by the Commission, Congress, and the Biden administration to take unprecedented action as they continue to pressure China and challenge the One China policy.

Beijing has categorically rejected western accusations of potential cyber-attacks on government devices. 

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the US has overstretched the concept of national security and abused state power to quash foreign businesses. 

The White House provided federal agencies a period of 30 days to remove TikTok on all federal devices. 

In response to the move, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday said, "We firmly oppose those wrong actions."

Read more: TikTok takes further steps to maintain operations in the US: Reuters