TikTok has been prohibited from all federal government devices in the United States, citing it as a “high risk” security problem. The lone exemption is for law enforcement and national security services, which may utilize the app in exceptional circumstances for security research.
The judgment ultimately means that almost four million government employees will be required to uninstall TikTok from their mobile devices and other devices. The ByteDance-owned app is prohibited under a provision in Biden’s recently approved $1.7 trillion spending package.
“We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices – a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests – rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” said Brooke Oberwetter, TikTok spokesperson regarding the ban.
Notably, the judgment comes as other states around the country have issued regulations prohibiting the use of the app. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem started the ball rolling last month when she issued an executive order prohibiting the use of the app.
“South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us,” Noem declared in a tweet.
Following that, North Dakota, Alabama, Utah, Maryland, and Texas followed suit.
Previously, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning about data leaks via the app. Director Christopher Wray told a House hearing that potential Chinese government access to users’ data or software through the app is enough to be “extremely concerned”.
Wray said that ByteDance embeds specific application programming interfaces (APIs) in the software which provides Beijing access to “control data collection of millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm”.
Former President Donald Trump spearheaded the campaign against the Chinese app. However, after Biden took office, he rescinded Trump’s executive orders that aimed to prohibit the downloads.