After United States attorney general Merrick Garland and other Justice Department officials convened a conference to discuss “national security issues“, rumours of a TikTok ban in the United States spread like wildfire among users.Informaion Guide Nigeria
Consistently, ByteDance’s popular platform has been deemed a threat to national security.
Earlier this year, a US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner expressed his worries about the app.
Brendan Carr, who was nominated by former president Donald Trump for a five-year term with the FCC in 2018, claimed it was a “sophisticated surveillance tool” which is responsible for the “surreptitious access of private and sensitive US user data”.
“TikTok is not what it appears to be on the surface. It is not just an app for sharing funny videos or memes. That’s the sheep’s clothing,” he wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
“At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.”
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Additionally, Trump vowed to ban the app in 2020, alleging a national threat. Joe Biden has since rescinded the executive order.
Now, Mohammed Alyahya of the Hudson Institute asserts that he is aware of the possibilities.
In a tweet, he wrote: “Hearing chatter that the US will ban TikTok today. Chatter that Huawei will be banned today followed by TikTok.”