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Bans on downloading TikTok onto government-issued smartphones and other devices have been in place in many executive branch agencies on the grounds that users’ data could be shared with China’s government.
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The U.S. House of Representatives is banning TikTok on all House-managed devices, moving to get in sync with a new law banning the app on executive branch government phones amid mounting national-security concerns.
The Chief Administrative Officer advised House members and their staff that the social-media application was banned from phones for all House members and staff effective immediately. U.S. officials and lawmakers from both parties have raised concerns about the app’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd.
Brooke Oberwetter, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said the move would have minimal practical impact as the number of House-managed phones with TikTok on them was in the low double digits. She said the move was a political signal rather than intended to actually address national security concerns.
The Senate Chief Information Officer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the Senate would put a similar policy in place.
Last week Congress approved a $1.65 trillion spending bill to fund the government for 2023 that also included a ban on TikTok on executive-branch government devices.
“With the passage of the Omnibus that banned TikTok on executive branch devices, the CAO worked with the Committee on House Administration to implement a similar policy for the House,” a statement from the Chief Administrative Officer said.
Before the spending bill passed, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration had already imposed similar bans on downloading TikTok on government-issued smartphones and other devices, on the grounds that data collected on users could be shared with the Chinese government.
Biden administration officials have been negotiating with TikTok executives on measures aimed at preventing information that TikTok collects on U.S. users from being shared with Beijing.
TikTok has repeatedly said that it safeguards the data of its users and wouldn’t share it with the Chinese government.
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