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From March 31, all devices with access to the New Zealand Parliamentary Network will be required to remove the TikTok app. Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States have already taken similar measures due to data security concerns.
New Zealand will ban the Chinese social network TikTok from the devices of members of parliament, officials told AFP on Friday, following in the footsteps of other Western countries that have taken similar measures.
The ban will affect all devices with access to the parliamentary network, said Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, a parliamentary official. It will take effect on March 31.
According to Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, the risks are “not acceptable in the current parliamentary environment in New Zealand”. “The decision was taken on the basis of the analyzes of our own experts, following a discussion with our colleagues in government and internationally,” he added.
American threats
New Zealand will therefore follow the path already taken by Canada, the UK and US federal agencies, which have already banned TikTok from government devices due to data security concerns. The European Commission has also ordered to ban the video-sharing application from the devices of its employees.
Global action once morest TikTok started in India in 2020. The social network was on a list of banned apps following deadly clashes on the border with China, with New Delhi claiming to defend its sovereignty. The same year, former President Donald Trump accused TikTok of being a tool of espionage on behalf of Beijing.
TikTok has admitted that employees of its parent company ByteDance in China have accessed Americans’ account information, but has always denied passing this data to authorities.
The current President of the United States, Joe Biden, for his part recently threatened to completely ban the application from the territory, if it did not separate from ByteDance.
With AFP