On Monday, the Canadian government announced to ban on the use of TikTok on mobile devices held by government officials. Canada announced that government officials would not be allowed to use the application on their mobile phones. The decision reiterates the Western concern regarding the Chinese-owned video sharing & streaming platform.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his statement said that the decision could be the first step of a series of actions in near future. Justin Trudeau said the government took an important step to convey to its federal employees that they cannot use TikTok on government-owned electronic devices. He added that the Canadian business community and other sectors would follow the move to protect their data.
President of the Canadian Treasury Board, Mona Fortier, said that the federal government would make sure that the application is not downloaded on government devices.
Hurdles for TikTok by White House and European Union
Earlier, a similar decision was taken by the European Union as last week the administration imposed a temporary ban on using the app due to cyber security reasons.
The White House also gave the government agencies an ultimatum of 30 days to assure no employee has downloaded TikTok on systems and devices owned by the government. Shalanda Young, Director Office of Management and Budget, said that all federal agencies must un-install TikTok from devices.
TikTok may get squashed under US vs China cold war as US looks to ban app by next month
TikTok is one of the most popular platforms among the youth. However, the ownership of the app by a Chinese company has caused problems for app in the West. Western countries, including the United States, is concerned that Beijing could use the app to collect data from Western users or spread pro-China narratives or disinformation. The video sharing app is owned by a Chinese company ‘Byte Dance’ whose headquarter is in Singapore. ByteDance has multiple times denied using the application to spy on users. The platform has released several announcements in which it assures users about not breaching data privacy.