Security experts and tech watchers have called the UK government’s ban on TikTok on official devices “irrational” and nothing more than geopolitical reasons.
Cabinet Secretary Oliver Dowden announced Thursday in the House of Commons a ban on the use of the short video app on official government devices. It comes after the United States reportedly told TikTok’s Chinese owners, ByteDance, that they must sell their shares in the company or it would be banned in the country.
Dowden said the UK ban was “a proportionate move based on particular risk with government equipment”.
Similar bans on employee devices have also been announced by the European Commission, Canada and the United States. Dozens of U.S. states have also banned employees from using TikTok on devices provided to them for work.
But the bans appear to be motivated by something other than security threats, experts in the field say.
“It seems completely irrational to single out this app not for its technical prowess, but for its global geopolitics,” said Heather Burns, author of the book. understand privacy and a technology policy expert with over 20 years of experience.
Mrs. Burns said I that TikTok was a drop in the ocean compared to big technical data collection practices in general. “Commercial partnerships between ad technology providers and data brokers mean there are tens of thousands of active surveillance trackers installed on government employees’ work and home devices, including trackers available to foreign governments.”
TikTok has offices in London and Dublin, as well as the US, but was originally developed by ByteDance, a company based in Beijing. The company is based in the Cayman Islands.
A study published earlier this year by the Georgia Institute of Technology Internet Governance Project found no evidence of TikTok security risks. Robin Kaplan, a senior fellow at the American nonprofit Data & Society, told me: I that anything that opened the door to a nationwide ban was a concern.
Ms Kaplan noted that the ban on government devices “may be linked to some extent to concerns raised by findings that TikTok employees are spying on journalists.” Earlier this year, it emerged that TikTok employees were harassing journalists using the app, which the company said was linked to a small number of scammers. “The rest doesn’t seem proportionate at all,” Ms Kaplan said.
Other experts wondered how much information TikTok could collect from users, even if it’s data for the Chinese state that might not be available elsewhere.
“I’m not sure if government devices are important to TikTok or anyone else,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, Robertson professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Data experts have previously indicated that if TikTok is completely banned, if the Chinese government wants to get information on Western social media users, it can simply buy access to information collected through other US apps through data brokers.
Professor Vaidhyanathan also pointed out that the number of government devices is vanishingly small compared to TikTok’s explosive user base, which could pose a real security risk if China wants to gain access to users. “How many authorities? And who cares that government officials use TikTok to do this? TikTok has billions of users and the number is growing,” says Professor Vaidhyanathan. “No one bans TikTok from personal devices, and that’s the main thing.”
A TikTok spokesperson said: “We are disappointed with this decision. We believe these bans are based on a fundamental misunderstanding and driven by wider geopolitics in which TikTok and our millions of users in the UK play no part. We remain committed to working with the government to solve any problem, but we must be judged on the facts and treated equally with our competitors.
“We have embarked on a comprehensive plan to further protect our user data in Europe, which includes storing UK user data in our European data centers and tightening data access controls, including independent third party oversight of our approach.”
The National Cybersecurity Center and the cabinet have repeatedly declined to comment on a possible TikTok ban. The cabinet declined to answer questions about whether TikTok, if not safe to use on government devices, is also not safe to use by journalists and ordinary users.
However, for some this decision did not come as a surprise. “We are seeing this evolution over time and across jurisdictions,” said Dom Hallas, chief executive of Coadec, the political voice of UK tech startups. “The reality is that we rely on the security services for evaluation. I am not aware of the evidence you have.”
Mr Hallas says I that the decision may not only be based on acute concerns about TikTok, but may be part of a broader reassessment of Chinese technology and its role in our society.
Source: I News
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