Why TikTok Is Being Banned on Government Phones in US, EU and Beyond

The United States is ratcheting up nationwide safety issues about TikTok, mandating that every one federal staff delete the Chinese-owned social media app from government-issued cell phones. Other Western governments are pursuing comparable bans, citing espionage fears.

So how severe is the menace? And ought to TikTok customers who do not work for the federal government be frightened concerning the app, too?

The solutions rely considerably on whom you ask, and how involved you might be in normal about expertise corporations gathering and sharing private information.

Here’s what to know:

How are the US and different governments blocking TikTok?

The White House mentioned Monday it’s giving U.S. federal businesses 30 days to delete TikTok from all government-issued cellular units.

Congress, the White House, U.S. armed forces and greater than half of U.S. states had already banned TikTok amid issues that its guardian firm, ByteDance, would give consumer information — corresponding to shopping historical past and location — to the Chinese authorities, or push propaganda and misinformation on its behalf.

The European Union’s government department has quickly banned TikTok from worker telephones, and Denmark and Canada have introduced efforts to dam TikTok on government-issued telephones.

China says the bans reveal the United States’ insecurities and are an abuse of state energy. But they arrive at a time when Western expertise corporations, together with Airbnb, Yahoo and LinkedIn, have been leaving China or downsizing operations there due to Beijing’s strict privateness regulation that specifies how corporations can accumulate and retailer information.

What are the issues about TikTok?

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance may share TikTok consumer information with China’s authoritarian authorities.

A regulation China carried out in 2017 requires corporations to provide the federal government any private information related to the nation’s nationwide safety. There’s no proof that TikTok has turned over such information, however fears abound as a result of huge quantity of consumer information it collects.

Concerns have been heightened in December when ByteDance mentioned it fired 4 staff who accessed information on two journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times whereas trying to trace down the supply of a leaked report concerning the firm. TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter mentioned the breach was an “egregious misuse” of the workers’ authority.

There can be concern about TikTok’s content material and whether or not it harms youngsters’ psychological well being. Researchers from the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate mentioned in a report launched in December that consuming dysfunction content material on the platform had amassed 13.2 billion views. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. teenagers use TikTok, in accordance with the Pew Research Center.

Who has pushed for TikTok restrictions?

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump and his administration sought to drive ByteDance to unload its U.S. property and ban TikTok from app shops. Courts blocked Trump’s efforts, and President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s orders after taking workplace however ordered an in-depth examine of the difficulty. A deliberate sale of TikTok’s U.S. property was shelved.

In Congress, concern concerning the app has been bipartisan. Congress handed the “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” in December as a part of a sweeping authorities funding bundle. The laws does permit for TikTok use in sure circumstances, together with for nationwide safety, regulation enforcement and analysis functions.

House Republicans are anticipated to maneuver ahead Tuesday with a invoice that might give Biden the facility to ban TikTok nationwide. The laws, proposed by Rep. Mike McCaul, seems to be to bypass the challenges the administration would face in court docket if it moved ahead with sanctions in opposition to the corporate.

The invoice has acquired pushback from civil liberties organizations. In a letter despatched Monday to McCaul and Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., rating member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union mentioned a nationwide TikTok ban can be unconstitutional and would “likely result in banning many other businesses and applications as well.”

How dangerous is TikTok?

It relies upon on who you ask.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco has expressed issues that the Chinese authorities may acquire entry to consumer information.

“I do not use TikTok, and I’d not advise anybody to take action,” Monaco said earlier this month at the policy institute Chatham House in London.

TikTok said in a blog post in June that it will route all data from U.S. users to servers controlled by Oracle, the Silicon Valley company it chose as its U.S. tech partner in 2020 in an effort to avoid a nationwide ban. But it is storing backups of the data in its own servers in the U.S. and Singapore. The company said it expects to delete U.S. user data from its own servers, but it did not provide a timeline as to when that would occur.

But the amount of information TikTok collects might not be that different from other popular social media sites, experts say.

In an analysis published in 2021, the University of Toronto’s nonprofit Citizen Lab said TikTok and Facebook collect similar amounts of user data, including device identifiers that can be used to track a user and other information that can piece together a user’s behavior across different platforms. It’s valuable information for advertisers.

“If you are not comfortable with that level of data collection and sharing, you should avoid using the app,” the Citizen Lab report said.

What are other experts saying?

While the potential abuse of privacy by the Chinese government is concerning, “it’s equally concerning that the US government, and many other governments, already abuse and exploit the data collected by every other U.S.-based tech company with the same data-harvesting business practices,” said Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future.

“If policy makers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for a basic privacy law that bans all companies from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone,” Greer said.

Others say there is legitimate reason for concern.

People who use TikTok might think they’re not doing anything that would be of interest to a foreign government, but that’s not always the case, said Anton Dahbura, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute. Important information about the United States is not strictly limited to nuclear power plants or military facilities; it extends to other sectors, such as food processing, the finance industry and universities, Dahbura said.

What does TikTok say?

It’s unclear how much the government-wide TikTok ban might impact the company. Oberwetter, the TikTok spokesperson, said it has “no way” of knowing whether its users are government employees.

The company, though, has questioned the bans, saying it has not been given an opportunity to answer questions and that governments were cutting themselves off from a platform beloved by millions.

“These bans are little greater than political theater,” Oberwetter mentioned.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is ready to testify subsequent month earlier than Congress. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will ask concerning the firm’s privateness and data-security practices, in addition to its relationship with the Chinese authorities.