The U.S. Army has banned military personnel from using the popular video app TikTok on government-issued phones, following guidance from the Pentagon and highlighting growing tensions over the app's Beijing-based parent firm.
An Army spokeswoman told Military.com in an interview released this week that the app was "considered a cyber threat" and not allowed on government-issued devices. An Army spokeswoman told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the service branch was adhering to directions from the Defense Department, which flagged the app for "potential security risks."
The measure follows a similar ban from the U.S. Navy and a "cyber awareness" message earlier in December from the Defense Department that which urged the Pentagon's roughly 23,000 employees to uninstall the app because it could potentially expose personal data to "unwanted actors."
A Pentagon spokesman said the threat is related to potential loss of personally identifiable information but would not provide further detail. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Army's ban and the rare notice from the Pentagon, which does not generally issue policy measures on individual social media services, reflects deep-rooted doubts throughout Washington about TikTok and its Chinese parent, ByteDance.
Some of their suspicions stem from criticisms raised by TikTok's former employees, who told The Washington Post earlier this year that the company in the past restricted videos in alignment with Chinese rules on acceptable speech.
In response, TikTok has sought to rebut lingering privacy, security and censorship concerns. It says it stores U.S. users' data in Virginia with a backup in Singapore, for example, and doesn't apply Beijing's strict content guidelines in the United States. But those assurances have hardly satisfied lawmakers, some of whom had planned to grill the app's leader, Alex Zhu, on a trip he planned to make to Washington in December but ultimately canceled, citing scheduling conflicts.
Concern has been building about TikTok's Chinese roots. Photo / Getty
In October, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked U.S. intelligence officials to investigate the app for national security concerns, fearing that Chinese spies could gain access to American users' personal data.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., meanwhile, requested his own national security probe that threatens to unwind the merger that made TikTok possible in the first place.
And Sen. Josh Hawley held a hearing this year with an eye on TikTok and its content moderation rules, responding to concerns that it limits what U.S. users see in line with Beijing's demands. The company declined to testify at the session, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Missouri Republican.
The Defense Department has recommended that service members "be wary" of the apps they download and to research the developers' ownership for "any suspicious foreign connections."
Uninstalling TikTok "will not prevent already potentially compromised information from propagating, but it could keep additional information from being collected," the agency told military officials, according to a statement from a Defense Department spokesman.
In a transparency report released this week, the company said it responded to 298 legal or emergency requests for information on users from 28 countries in the first half of the year, including 107 from India and 79 from the United States.
TikTok also said it received 28 requests from government bodies in nine countries to remove content deemed a violation of local laws, and removed or restricted 25 accounts in response.
TikTok said it "did not receive any government requests to remove or restrict content" or any "legal requests for account information" from China.
