The Canadian government has banned its officials from using TikTok since Tuesday, February 28th. And it could be the first of several measures, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. The aforementioned country echoes the position taken by the European Commission and the United States, who also recently vetoed the application in their government offices. Everyone fears for data security.
Trudeau said he hopes the action will inspire companies and individuals to think about the security of their data and take action accordingly. Mona Fortier, Chair of the Canadian Treasury Board, stressed thatThe application represents an “unacceptable risk”. However, the official clarified that they had no evidence that government information had been compromised.
The White House has also stepped up its pressure on TikTok this week. The United States government yesterday ordered federal agencies, remove TikTok from all government devices within 30 days. In addition, within the next 90 days, they must include this ban in contracts and cancel any other formal agreements that provide for the use of the application. Thus, the order issued by Congress last year has been carried out.
A similar deadline was set by the European Commission last week. All of its employees will have until March 15 to remove TikTok from their corporate mobile devices, and even those intended for personal use with corporate applications.
Canada bans TikTok, what does the social network think?
A spokeswoman for TikTok, which is run by Chinese company ByteDance, called Canada’s ban “curious.” As verified Reutersthe company questioned it the measure would be taken “without stating any specific security considerations”. The company already said last week in a response to the European Commission that the measures were based on “fundamental misconceptions”.
The Chinese government also spoke on this topic. Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokesman, told a press conference today that the US government, in particular, is “generalizing the concept of national security” and “abusing its power.” A Chinese official even sneered about this: “What should be the world’s leading superpower to be afraid of the favorite app of the youth?”
The concern about how TikTok might use data comes from the Donald Trump administration. Its leadership at the time vetoed Huawei and other companies, arguing that they posed a threat to national security. In Europe, in particular, fear rose after TikTok updated its policy last year allow company employees in China to access information from European users.
Source: Hiper Textual
I’m Ben Stock, a highly experienced and passionate journalist with a career in the news industry spanning more than 10 years. I specialize in writing content for websites, including researching and interviewing sources to produce engaging articles. My current role is as an author at Gadget Onus, where I mainly cover the mobile section.
