The order comes from the White House. Washington on Monday (February 27) asked all federal agencies to remove the TikTok app from its mobile devices within 30 days, citing concerns about the security of user data. A few agencies, such as the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, had already implemented such restrictions.
That same day, the Canadian government announced that it would ban the TikTok app from the mobile devices it provides to its staff starting Tuesday, citing “an unacceptable level of risk” to privacy and security. An emergency ban.
“On a mobile device, TikTok’s data collection methods provide considerable access to phone content,” Treasury Department President Mona Fortier said in a statement, noting that the ban was taken “as a preventative”. “We have no reason to believe at this time that any government information has been compromised,” she added, however.
A spokeswoman for TikTok reacted by deploring, in an email to Agence France-Presse, a “curious” decision, taken “without citing any specific security problem”, and by regretting that the platform was not contacted by the government.
The ultra-popular short and viral video application, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is under increasing scrutiny by Westerners who fear that Beijing could thus access the data of users around the world.
In the wake of the European Commission
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 Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in 2018.
The Canadian Privacy Commissioner announced last week that it has launched an investigation into TikTok aimed at establishing its compliance with Canadian laws. In particular, it aims to verify that “TikTok has obtained valid consent for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information”.
The President of the Ministry of the Treasury wished to recall that the general public was not impacted by this ban: “As far as the general public is concerned, the decision to use an application or a social media platform is a personal choice. However, the Communications Security Establishment’s Canadian Center for Cyber ??Security guidelines strongly recommend that Canadians understand the risks and make an informed choice before deciding which tools they want to use. »
