Then why not generalize this? Why is it ok for any number of companies to collect data on US citizens, well beyond what is necessary to operate, with little to no oversight or accountability? The solution isn’t adhoc. Make all tech companies accountable. Require any company that meets a size threshold to have a regular external audit of their practices, with big enough repercussions for violations that companies can’t just pay a small fine and change nothing.

TikTok is low hanging fruit, but what’s the point if data brokers can legally resell mountains of information about you? The truth is TikTok isn’t breaking the law in most instances, we just don’t have any law that prevents what they are doing. National security arguments can’t be where this is fought, because we’ve seen over and over that countries will claim everything they don’t like is a national security issue.