WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democratic Senator Ed Markey on Thursday proposed new national security safeguards that would ensure TikTok could remain online as the fate of the short video app used by 170 million Americans remains uncertain.

Congress last year passed legislation to force China's ByteDance to divest TikTok by January 19 or face a ban, but President Donald Trump has directed the Justice Department not to enforce the law.

Markey's proposal would eliminate the requirement that ByteDance sell TikTok's U.S. operations if it establishes transparency requirements about content and limits foreign access to the data of TikTok's American users.