BRUSSELS (SONNA) \u2014 Belgium is banning TikTok from government phones over worries about cybersecurity, privacy, and misinformation, the country\u2019s prime minister said Friday, mirroring recent action by other authorities in Europe and the U.S.<\/p>\n
The Chinese-owned video-sharing app will be temporarily prohibited from devices owned or paid for by Belgium\u2019s federal government for at least six months, according to a post on Alexander de Croo\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
TikTok said it is \u201cdisappointed at this suspension, which is based on basic misinformation about our company.\u201d The company said it\u2019s \u201creadily available to meet with officials to address any concerns and set the record straight on misconceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
TikTok is owned by China\u2019s ByteDance, which moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. The company sought to distance itself from its Chinese roots, saying its parent company is incorporated outside of China and it\u2019s majority owned by global institutional investors.<\/p>\n
But the\u00a0European Union\u2019s\u00a0three main institutions and\u00a0Denmark\u2019s defense ministry\u00a0have already ordered employees to remove the app from devices used for official business. Similar bans have been\u00a0imposed in Canada\u00a0and the U.S.<\/p>\n
The tussle over TikTok is part of a wider\u00a0global rivalry between China and the U.S.\u00a0and its Western allies over technological and economic supremacy.<\/p>\n
De Croo said Belgium\u2019s ban was based on warnings from the state security service and its cybersecurity center, which said the app could harvest user data and tweak algorithms to manipulate its news feed and content.<\/p>\n
They also warned that TikTok could be compelled to carry out spying for Beijing, he said, without being more specific.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a new geopolitical context where influence and surveillance between states have shifted to the digital world,\u201d de Croo said in an online statement. \u201cWe must not be naive: TikTok is a Chinese company that today is obliged to cooperate with the intelligence services. This is the reality. Prohibiting its use on federal service devices is common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
TikTok said user data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore and pointed to\u00a0new measures to ease European concerns\u00a0by storing user data in European data centers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chinese government cannot compel another sovereign nation to provide data stored in that nation\u2019s territory,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Source: AP<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BRUSSELS (SONNA) \u2014 Belgium is banning TikTok from government phones over worries about cybersecurity, privacy, and misinformation, the country\u2019s prime minister said Friday, mirroring recent action by other authorities in Europe and the U.S. The Chinese-owned video-sharing app will be temporarily prohibited from devices owned or paid for by Belgium\u2019s federal government for at least […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":414982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-414981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414981"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414987,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414981\/revisions\/414987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}