The US Senate, Thursday, voted to prohibit the use of TikTok on phones of employees of the government over security concerns.
The sponsor of the bill, Senator Josh Hawley, said of the bill, “TikTok is a major security risk and has no place on government devices.”
US President Donald Trump has set a deadline for September for the app to either be acquired by a US company or be banned from use in the US.
Talks of banning the app in the US has been on for a while, as tensions between the US and China intensifies.
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The Senate's vote prohibits any employee of the government, members of congress or any government corporation from downloading the app onto their phones or any other app created by ByteDance - firm that created the TikTok app - “on any device issued by the United States or a government corporation.”
The bill also states that there is an exception to the rule, and the exceptions are that the app can only be used on a government-issued device for “any investigation, cybersecurity research activity, enforcement action, disciplinary action, or intelligence activity.”
Expanding the scope of the ban, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said that TikTok is not the only app the United States is looking to ban for US users, but other apps developed by the Chinese that are deemed threatening to the data security of Americans.
The US alleges that China uses the app to collect data of Americans for the purpose of spying on them; this allegations have been dismissed by China.
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