U.S. House of Representatives bans TikTok from official devices

TikTok

Phoenix.com Technology News, December 28, Beijing time, the executive branch of the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday that the popular short video app TikTok has been banned from use on all devices managed by the U.S. House of Representatives. The move by the House of Representatives is to follow the example of an upcoming law that bans TikTok from being used on U.S. government devices.

In a message to all lawmakers and staff Tuesday, the House Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) said TikTok “presents a high risk due to a number of security issues” and must be removed from all devices managed by the House. Anyone with TikTok on their device will be contacted for deletion and banned from future downloads of the app, the message said.

The new rule follows a series of steps by U.S. state governments to ban ByteDance-owned TikTok from being used on government devices. As of last week, 19 U.S. states had at least partially blocked the app on government-managed devices, citing security concerns. Last week, the U.S. passed a $1.66 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund the U.S. government through Sept. 30, 2023, including provisions banning the use of TikTok on federally managed devices. Once President Biden signs the bill into law, it will go into effect immediately.

“With the passage of the omnibus bill banning the use of TikTok on executive branch devices, the CAO is working with the House Administration Committee to implement a similar policy for the House,” a spokesperson for the CAO said Tuesday.

TikTok has yet to comment. In addition, US lawmakers have proposed to ban TikTok nationwide. (Author/Xiao Yu)

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