TikTok – or rather, the platform’s possible connections with the Chinese government – is causing increasing concern in Western countries. In the US (but not only) there are attempts to ban the use of the application, and London recently announced a ban on the use of TikTok on the phones of British officials.
The Digital Council advises politicians not to use TikTok
Now it seems that a similar decision may be made in the future also in Poland. As reported by Karol Tokarczyk from Polityka Insight on Twitter, such a recommendation was issued by the Council for Digitization, i.e. the government advisory body of the ministry responsible for digitization (currently the Chancellery of the Prime Minister).
The board expressed “concern about the security of data stored on devices where the TikTok app is installed” in the document. The body notes that it “shares the concerns that Chinese tech companies, including the TikTok app, may be assisting the Chinese authorities and their intelligence services in collecting huge amounts of data around the world.” The Digitization Council points out that it is of particular interest [służb chińskich – red.] can enjoy political and security purposes.
In the recommendation, the authority recommended introducing an order to remove the application from phones belonging to politicians and officials. It is about “members and employees of the Sejm, Senate, Government and employees of government institutions and public administration in Poland”. The exception is when the company device is used only for TikTok.
The council also recommended removing the application from the private smartphones of politicians and officials, as long as they use official applications on their devices. If the owner of the phone does not want to do this, he should – according to the Council – get rid of business applications from his private smartphone.
Council members also proposed to phase out the use of equipment from high-risk suppliers within four (rather than seven) years. The Prime Minister’s advisory body is also concerned about the expansion of Chinese tech companies – Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi, OnePlus and Realme. Karol Tokarczyk points out, however, that their examples are described quite selectively, because the document mentions the use of Huawei equipment by one of the telecoms, but does not mention other operators who also use Huawei products.
In recent weeks, the European Union and Canada have ordered their officials to remove the TikTok app from all smartphones that are also used for business purposes. The US made a similar decision earlier.
On Wednesday, Shou Chew, the CEO of the company responsible for TikTok, was questioned before the US Congress, where he had to face a wave of serious allegations: from providing Chinese data to Chinese authorities to facilitating suicides. You can read more about it in the following article:
Source: Gazeta
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