The US President Donald Trump on August 6, 2020 signed an executive order imposing a ban on the popular video-sharing platform TikTok and its Chinese parent company. The ban will take effect in 45 days.
The US President said that the United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect its national security. The order will bar any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with ByteDance Ltd or any company in which it has an interest.
TikTok is owned Chinese company ByteDance which has its US headquarters in Southern California.
Key Highlights
• The executive order stated that the step is needed to deal with the national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services supply chain.
• According to the order, the TikTok app has been downloaded some 175 million times in the United States and more than a billion times around the world.
• The order stated that TikTok automatically captures a lot of information from its users, including location data and network activity information such as browsing and search histories.
• Further, it stated that this data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information.
• The order also speculated that the date from TikTok could potentially be used by China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.
• The United States Armed Forces, Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration have already banned the use of TikTok on phones of federal government employees.
Background
US President Donald Trump had said earlier on August 3, 2020 that TikTok will be "out of business" in the United States if it is not sold to a US firm by September 15.
Microsoft has reportedly having discussions with TikTok's parent firm ByteDance since mid-July to buy TikTok’s US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations. TikTok is currently valued at US$50 billion.
Comments
All Comments (0)
Join the conversation