Pak Sahafat – The use of the Chinese application “Tik Tok”, which has raised concerns in the West these days about the possibility of monitoring users’ data, is banned by some Western governments.
According to the report of the International group of Pak Sahafat news agency, The German newspaper “Tags Spiegel” wrote in an article: This Chinese program has been banned in the European Union, Canada and Latvia. The United States is also preparing a general ban on this application. There, it is considered the “Trojan horse of the Chinese Communist Party”.
Also, the use of Tik Tok is apparently banned on all German government mobile phones. Similar demands have been made for German authorities after the EU Commission and the EU Parliament on Wednesday banned the app last week. However, according to the most recent survey among all ministries, the use of this application is currently blocked, without a direct ban. The only exception is the German Federal Ministry of Health. This is due to data protection concerns and access concerns from China.
A spokesman for the German Federal Finance Ministry said on Wednesday: The Tik Tok app cannot be used on official mobile devices in the Federal Ministry of Finance. Also, in the Ministry of Labor, Tik Tok is not installed on officially managed smartphones and cannot be installed independently by employees. Other ministries also announced that only a limited number of apps for service devices are available in domestic app stores, and this Chinese app is not one of them. The spokesperson of the Federal Ministry of Construction also says: Therefore, the possible ban is unnecessary.
The only special case is the German Federal Ministry of Health, which has launched its Tik Tok channel since March 2020. This is how the ministry started providing information about the corona pandemic and now has almost 145,000 followers. German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach publishes short videos every few days about hospital reforms there and sometimes answers questions from citizens.
The White House also banned the use of this social media app owned by a Chinese company from government phones on Monday. In addition to the United States, Canada also imposed such a ban. The US government describes Tik Tok as a potential threat to national security.
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The Foreign Relations Committee in the US House of Representatives introduced a bill on Wednesday that would allow President Joe Biden to ban TikTok entirely in the United States. Michael McCall, the Republican chairman of this committee, said: “Tik Tok is a Trojan horse of the Chinese Communist Party today, which is used to monitor and exploit the personal information of Americans.”
Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also banned the use of the Chinese short video platform TikTok on company mobile phones and other official devices for security reasons. A spokesman for the ministry told Latvian Radio in Riga on Thursday that it was a precautionary measure recommended by the ministry’s internal security service.
Austria has recently banned the use of this application for security reasons.
The European Union Commission recently banned the use of the Tik Tok social network in the work devices of its employees due to privacy concerns. It is feared that the Chinese government has access to the data of this application.
A spokesperson for the European Commission stated that this is a temporary measure that should be reviewed regularly. This Chinese social network criticized this action.
This action of the European Commission is the latest in the process of growing tensions between Beijing and the West. In recent months, Western governments have increasingly voiced their concerns about the Chinese platform gathering information and providing it to Beijing officials.
The Netherlands has also banned the use of this application.