The European Parliament informed its staff on Tuesday that it is banning them from using the social networking site TikTok on their business devices, citing data security concerns, following the identical measure announced by European Commission last Thursday. The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and its general secretary, Alessandro Ciocchetti, decided that the application TikTok is not allowed to be used on his staff’s business devices — computers, mobile phones, tablets — from March 20.
“On this date this social networking site was accessed from Parliament’s computers will be excluded“, its directorate general for innovation and technological support (DG ITEC) clarified by email EC to the institution’s 8,000 employees.
He also issued a “strong” recommendation to staff members to uninstall the TikTok platform software from their their personal devices. The European Commission announced last week that its staff have until March 15 at the latest to uninstall the app from their business devices. A similar measure was taken by the European Council, the body that represents the governments of the 27 member states, APE – BPE reports.
The bans come as the TikTok platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has become the cause of heightened concern in the West over fears Beijing could gain access to user data around the world. The Brussels coordinate the step with Washington. In the US, a law signed by President Joe Biden in early January prohibits the download, installation and use of the TikTok app on the devices of federal government officials.
About twenty US states have announced measures of this nature for their employees. And in the US Congress, a law under discussion could even lead to an outright ban on the application in the US.
In the EU, ByteDance is in the spotlight Irish Privacy Authoritywhich is suspected of having violated European law, specifically the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding the processing of children’s personal data and the transfer of data to China.
TikTok acknowledged in November that some its workers in China may be accessing the data of European users and, in December, that its employees used data to track journalists. But the company that manages the platform categorically denies that there is any access and any control on its part government of China in these data.
Source: News Beast
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