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World leaders move to ban TikTok

Aug 13, 2020
2 min read

by Aniela Bautista and Riannon Malate

SAFE?. Authorities found defects in the security system of TikTok. It is a streaming application that is well-received and used particularly by younger generations. © Solis

With the recent news of the United States of America (USA) President, Donald Trump, threatening to ban TikTok, Josh Hawley, a senator of the USA, introduced a bill to ban it, in a hearing last March 2020.

“TikTok is one example of an application where the average citizen doesn’t understand the implications of what’s behind it,” Clyde Wallace, an official of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Cyber Division, said.

“Any and all data can be transferred to other locations and associations entities to include the Chinese parent company,” Wallace added.

“China has amazing programs in collection of data and developing artificial intelligence and analytics against the data for purposes that we don’t fully know…and that should give us great concern,” explained Bryan Ware, a cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security in America.

Other countries have also expressed their dissent towards the video-sharing app.

The Indian government has already banned several China-based apps, including TikTok last June, calling them a “threat to sovereignty and integrity”.

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asserted that the app is “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India”.

“We’re looking at the messaging system, which is completely open, we’re looking at the kind of videos that are collected and shared by children online. We do have an active investigation into TikTok right now, so watch this space,” said Elizabeth Denham, the United Kingdom Information Commissioner back in 2019.

Although there have been many reports on TikTok's possible ban in certain countries, its operations still continue at this moment.