With a wave of changes as the new year arrives, the US House of Representatives Committee on House Administration declared a total ban on TikTok from all mobile devices managed by the house on Tuesday.
The reason behind the ban as stated in the memo from the Chief Administrative Officer of the House, Catherine Szpindor, the app proposed a “number of security risks” for which the working staff of the house is ordered to delete the TikTok app from any mobile that currently downloaded the app and even restricted the downloading of the app in any mobile or other devices.
Many government offices and entities have put up a ban on the ByteDance-owned app TikTok, and the US House is one of them.
In the previous month, the step to ban the app was approved and all federal employees were asked to stop using the app and restrict downloading on any government devices.
The states of the US that have banned the application are Texas, Georgia, Maryland, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Nebraska. Also to include the US military has also banned the app and its use by any military member.
According to a CBS News article, TikTok’s Chinese holding company ByteDance has drawn attention to growing concerns regarding national security. US authorities have stated numerous times again that the Chinese government may demand the corporation to disclose the client information it collects.
Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), previously stated in November that the agency has worries about national security, specifically the possibility for the Chinese government to use it to regulate data collecting.
“We do have national security concerns,” CBS News quoted FBI Director Christopher Wray says.
“They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users,” Christopher Wray added.
In consideration of possible security and privacy risks, the former Trump administration had issued a notice stating that they would entirely forbid the app unless it was sold to an American firm, according to CBS News.
Eventually, US President Joe Biden lifted the restrictions on the app and requested a government report of applications with overseas ownership.
