The French government on Friday banned its officials from installing the Chinese social network app TikTok and other “entertainment” apps on their professional phones mainly for security reasons, as other countries and institutions in Europe have already done. “These applications may pose a data protection risk for administrations and their public agents,” the Ministry of Transformation and Public Service explained in a statement.
The European Commission is banning its workers from installing TikTok
additional
The Executive Director explained that the decision was taken after an analysis in which the challenges they raised were taken into consideration. In practice, it will not be possible to download or install entertainment applications such as the popular Chinese social network on the professional phones provided by the administration to its workers. The reason is that they “do not provide adequate levels of cybersecurity and data protection” so that they can be used on these computers, although the ministry noted that exceptions to this ban could be granted “on an exceptional basis” when justified by “needs of professionals” such as corporate communication.
The French authorities’ decision is one taken by various Western governments or the European Commission in response to concerns raised by Chinese legislation that obliges companies to transfer personal data when they deem it justified on national security grounds. France is actually the fourth EU country to make this decision, which was also adopted by the European Commission after the United States doubled down on the Chinese application.
In Denmark, the Ministry of Defense banned its employees’ TikTok on official phones on March 6. In Latvia, on March 2, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs imposed a ban on the use of the application on working electronic devices. The United Kingdom did the same on March 16, when it banned TikTok on official government mobile phones for security reasons. In the Netherlands, work phones received by government officials will be configured in a way that allows only pre-approved apps to be installed, avoiding “spy-sensitive” ones such as the social network TikTok since last Wednesday.
pressure in the United States
The US banned TikTok from official mobile phones months ago and is now considering asking the company to cut all ties with China if it wants to continue operating in the country. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended a special session with members of the US Congress on Thursday and warned them that a veto of that platform in the country would be detrimental to the economy and freedom of expression.
“It’s an app that people can get creative with. There are nearly five million American companies, most of them small, that use it to find customers and fuel their growth,” he told the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, noting that there are about 150 million users in the US. Qiu met bilaterally with some lawmakers this year to stress that the company offers privacy and security guarantees, but this was his first official appearance on Capitol Hill.
Qiu indicated that he is a Singaporean and resides in Singapore, that TikTok is managed by an executive team in the United States and Singapore, and is headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore, and that it is not available on the Chinese mainland. He said he was aware, however, that the fact that its parent company, ByteDance, had Chinese founders raised doubts about whether its software could be used or become a tool in the hands of China or the Chinese Communist Party. But “ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government. It is a private company. I have no evidence that the Chinese CEO had access to the data. They never asked us.”
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