TikTok is now banned on all devices owned and managed by the US House of Representatives, Reuters reported.
The House Executive Officer (CAO) reportedly told all lawmakers and staff in an email that they should delete the app from their devices as it is considered “high risk due to a number of security issues.” Anyone who is found to have this social networking application installed on their phone will be contacted to ensure that the application is deleted and they will be banned from downloading in the future.
This decision is the latest in several decisions taken by the US government to ban the existence of the app on devices owned by it. Lawmakers passed a sweeping $1.7 trillion spending bill last week that includes provisions that would ban TikTok’s use on executive branch devices. A CAO spokesperson told Reuters that following its admission, the CAO was working with the House Administration Committee to implement a similar policy for the House.
The decision came after the Senate unanimously passed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act introduced by Senator Josh Hawley. As Reuters noted, 19 states have also banned the app, at least partially, from installing and using the app on staff devices they own or manage. When the collective bill passed, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said in a conversation with Engadget that the company was “disappointed that Congress took action to ban TikTok on government devices”, calling it a “political decision that will do nothing to advance national security interests.”
Critics of TikTok in the US government have expressed concerns that the app could be used by Chinese officials as a tool to spy on the US. FBI Director Chris Wray called the app a “Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party” and said the app had no place in government devices until it was completely cut off from China. TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, sought to address these concerns by routing all local traffic through Oracle servers in the US and committing to delete all US user data from its servers.
Still, the recent announcement that ByteDance laid off four of its employees for improperly obtaining data from TikTok users in the US, including two reporters, probably didn’t help much in the company’s reassurance efforts.
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