The decision to ban the “TikTok” application on government agencies in the states of Ohio and New Jersey received widespread attention on American platforms, as it announced the ban on the application of the Chinese company “ByteDance” due to its danger to national security, to join many US states.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said, in a statement yesterday, Monday, that the ban came for reasons of national security and the safety of user data, which may reach the Chinese government through ByteDance, the company that owns the application.
“Strengthening cybersecurity is critical to protecting public safety, and the proactive and preventive measures we are implementing today will ensure the confidentiality and integrity of information owned by the state, and this measure will ensure that the state’s cybersecurity is unified against those who might seek to divide us,” Murphy said in his statement.
products and concerns
The statement added that the decision does not stop at TikTok only, but also all products of the ByteDance company that owns the application, as well as applications belonging to the famous Chinese company Alibaba, applications belonging to “Huawei” and “Tencent” companies, and the “WeChat” famous application.
The banned list also included the products of Kaspersky Lab, a company that specialized in cybersecurity and antivirus applications, headquartered in the Russian capital, Moscow.
In turn, Ohio Governor Mike Dwayne issued a similar statement, warning of the seriousness of the application and the seriousness of applications owned by Chinese companies, and prohibiting the installation of these applications on any device belonging to a government institution within the state.
The decision to ban the application on government agencies in America raises widespread controversy during the recent period, as some support it under the pretext of preserving the safety of users, and others reject it on the grounds that prevention is not the best option for dealing with this type of application.
Comments and objections
US Senator Josh Hawley commented, via his Twitter account, saying, “Tik Tok is a Trojan horse for the Chinese Communist Party. It is a great security threat to America,” and added, “There is no place for these applications on government agencies.”
On the other hand, some objected to the decision, pointing to the fact that many US technology companies possess a huge amount of data on users around the world, as does ByteDance.
The decision of the states of New Jersey and Ohio is not the first of its kind, as it was preceded by the US House of Representatives, which issued an internal memorandum on December 27, stipulating the need to delete the TikTok application from the phones of lawmakers and employees in Parliament, due to its security risks.
The Senate and a number of states passed the same resolution earlier, despite ByteDance’s continued assurances of the security of user data in the United States.
