Belgian federal authorities staff will not be allowed to make use of the Chinese language-owned video app TikTok on their work telephones, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo stated on Friday.
De Croo stated the Belgian nationwide safety council had warned of the dangers related to the big quantities of knowledge collected by TikTok, which is owned by Chinese language agency ByteDance, and the truth that the corporate is required to cooperate with Chinese language intelligence companies.
“That’s the actuality,” the prime minister stated in a press release.
“That is why it’s logical to forbid the usage of TikTok on telephones offered by the federal authorities. The protection of our data should prevail.”
TikTok in a press release stated it was upset with a choice it stated was primarily based on “essentially fallacious data”.
The corporate stated it shops person knowledge within the US and Singapore and is constructing knowledge facilities in Europe.
“The Chinese language authorities cannot drive different sovereign nations to share knowledge that’s saved of their territory,” a spokesman for the corporate stated.
The European Fee and the European Parliament final month banned TikTok from workers telephones on account of rising issues in regards to the firm, and whether or not China’s authorities may harvest customers’ knowledge or advance its pursuits.
Beijing has usually denied having any such intentions.
Belgium’s Flemish regional authorities on Thursday introduced it might prohibit entry to TikTok on workers telephones, and different regional governments had been urged by De Croo to use the identical guidelines.
The video-sharing app has already been banned from work telephones in US and Canada, whereas it has been utterly banned in India.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
