Britain became the latest Western country on Thursday to ban the use of TikTok on “government devices”, citing security fears related to a Chinese company’s ownership of the video-sharing app.
Speaking in Parliament, Oliver Dowden, a senior cabinet minister, announced the ban with immediate effect, describing it as “precautionary”, even though the United States, the executive arm of the European Union, Canada and India have already taken action. Similar.
Social networking apps collect and store “enormous amounts of user data, including contacts, user content and geolocation data on potentially sensitive government devices,” Dowden said, but TikTok has drawn more suspicion than most because of its owner, Chinese. ByteDance company.
Britain’s actions reflect fears expressed in a variety of Western governments that TikTok could share sensitive data from devices used by politicians and senior officials with the Beijing government.
The ban announced on Thursday follows a tightening of policy in Britain. On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described China as an “epoch-defining challenge” to the international order.
The new instruction applies only to the official work phones of government officials, and Mr. Dowden described it as a proportionate approach to addressing a potential government data vulnerability.
TikTok has long insisted that it does not pass information on to the Chinese government. In a statement on Thursday, TikTok said he was disappointed with the British government’s decision, saying the bans placed on it were “based on fundamental misconceptions and driven by broader geopolitics.” He added that he was taking steps to protect the data of British users.
In the United States, the White House told federal agencies February 27 that they had 30 days to remove the app from government devices. More than two dozen states have banned TikTok on government-issued devices, and a significant number of universities have blocked it from campus Wi-Fi networks. The app has been banned for three years on US government devices used by the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.
On Wednesday, TikTok said the Biden administration was toughening its stance on addressing national security concerns, telling the company it would have to sell the app or face a possible ban.
Several British government departments have TikTok accounts as part of their public outreach, including the country’s defense ministry, and just a day ago, Michelle Donelan, secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, said the app was safe. for the british. wear.
“In terms of the general public, it is absolutely a personal choice, but because we have the strongest data protection laws in the world, we are confident that the public can continue to use it,” he told lawmakers in Parliament.
China has ranked high in an updated security review released by the government, though Sunak’s tough language failed to satisfy all the hawks in his Conservative Party, including one of its former leaders, Iain Duncan Smith.
Duncan Smith questioned whether the British government officially considered China a threat and on Thursday, while praising the action against TikTok, called for the ban to be extended to private devices belonging to government officials.
That followed a decision by China in December to withdraw six of its diplomats from Britain, following a diplomatic standoff between London and Beijing in the wake of a violent clash during a pro-democracy rally at the Chinese Consulate in the city. Northern Manchester.
British authorities had asked six Chinese diplomats to waive their official immunity to allow police to investigate how a Hong Kong protester was injured after being dragged onto consulate grounds and beaten on October 16.
Instead, China decided to repatriate the six officials, including one of its top diplomats, Consul General Zheng Xiyuan, who had denied hitting a protester, without denying involvement in the incident.
satarian adam contributed reporting.
