() — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has officially banned its staff from downloading the TikTok social media app on their NATO-provided devices, citing security concerns, according to two NATO officials familiar with the matter.
NATO officials sent a note to staff on Friday morning announcing the ban, the officials said. The note made the ban official, but TikTok wasn’t really usable on NATO devices before anyway, officials said, due to internal technology restrictions.
“Cybersecurity is a top priority for NATO. NATO has strong requirements to determine apps for official business use. TikTok is not accessible on NATO devices,” a senior NATO official told .
NATO is the latest government body to ban the app out of fear the Chinese government could gain access to TikTok user data through its Chinese parent company, Bytedance. The US, UK, Norway, the European Parliament and other countries have already banned the app on government devices.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew stressed to US lawmakers earlier this month that the company is completely independent from Beijing, saying he has “not seen any evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data; we never They have asked for it, we have not provided it.”
He added that TikTok is moving its data to the United States, to be stored on American soil by the American company Oracle.
“So the risk would be similar to any government going to a US company and asking for data,” he said.
Even so, Western governments remain skeptical.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before Congress earlier this month in a separate hearing, the same day Chew was testifying, that “TikTok has to be killed one way or another.” “Clearly we, the administration and others, have realized the challenge this presents and are taking steps to address it.”
has contacted TikTok for comment.
