North American governments are concerned about the presence of Tiktok on the phones they provide to their employees. The Canadian administration announced on Monday that it would ban the application from its staff’s mobile devices, starting Tuesday. A document, consulted by Reuters, reports a similar decision in the United States.
The White House has given government agencies 30 days to ensure that TikTok is not installed on devices owned by the federal government, the news agency said. The release of the memo follows a vote by the US Congress in December, which urged the Biden administration to ban the use of the application on these devices.
In Canada, Treasury Department President Mona Fortier motivated the decision in a statement, explaining that “on a mobile device, TikTok’s data collection methods provide considerable access to phone content.” It evokes “an unacceptable level of risk”, while specifying that the measure was taken “as a preventive measure”. “We have no reason to believe at this time that any government information has been compromised,” she added.
U.S. Administration Chief Information Security Officer Chris DeRusha said, “These guidelines are part of the Administration’s ongoing commitment to securing our digital infrastructure and protecting the security and the privacy of the American people. Many government agencies, including the White House, Department of Defense, and State Department, had already banned TikTok, Reuters reports.
A spokesperson for TikTok reacted by deploring, in an email to AFP, a “curious” decision, taken “without citing any specific security problem”, and by regretting that the platform was not contacted by the government.
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A similar decision by the European Commission
The ultra-popular short and viral video platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is increasingly scrutinized by Westerners who fear that Beijing could thus access the data of users around the world. This ban in Canada comes days after a similar decision by the European Commission, which banned TikTok to its staff to “protect” the institution.
TikTok is also in the crosshairs of the American authorities: a law ratified a few weeks ago by President Joe Biden prohibits the use of this application in the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as on the devices of civil servants.
Relations between China and Canada have deteriorated sharply in recent years, particularly after the arrest by Canada at the request of the United States of the financial director of Huawei Meng Wanzhou in 2018. Privacy announced last week that it had launched an investigation into TikTok aimed at establishing its compliance with Canadian laws. It aims in particular to verify that “TikTok has obtained valid consent for the collection, use and communication of personal information”.
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