Another country has decided to treat the Chinese social network as a national security risk.
This year has been difficult for TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users, as several countries decided this year not to allow the app, which is controlled by the Chinese company ByteDance, to be installed on workplace devices of public employees, citing national security concerns.
The line was opened by the United States, then Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France followed suit. On behalf of the European Union, the European Commission announced back in February that it would also blacklist the social site offering short video content, as it feared, like others, that the Beijing regime, which exercises tight control over ByteDance, could use the service for espionage.
Meanwhile, Hungary, a member of the European Union and NATO, did not consider investigating the case, while neighboring Austria, which maintains its military neutrality, already announced in February that the Ministry of the Interior (Bundesministerium Inneres, BI) would study the necessity of banning TikTok on management tools. Country.
The Minister of the Interior, Gerhard Karner, finally announced at a cabinet meeting yesterday that, on the recommendation of a working group comprising experts from several ministries, the Chinese app will be removed from the service devices of public sector employees. Information and data protection concerns were behind the decision, but the ban does not extend to private cell phones of employees, and the professional TikTok accounts of politicians can also continue to be used.
Another important concession is that representatives of the executive branch, the so-called on “open machines”, will be able to access the platform later, if this is done in the context of an ongoing investigation. the Resolution report ORF from his article It is not clear when the government’s red card will go into effect.
