UK to ban TikTok? MPs request information commissioner to investigate potential breach of law

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has requested the information commissioner to look into whether TikTok, which is controlled by China, is in violation of UK legislation regarding the handling of personal information.

Just hours after the UK imposed a ban on the popular video-sharing app on ministers' and officials' government-owned phones, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) wrote a letter arguing that TikTok cannot be consistent with data protection standards, reported the Guardian.

IPAC predicts that TikTok may eventually be compelled to suspend operations in the UK if it is unable to comply with mounting criticism from the West over the company's Chinese ownership and the security of the data of its millions of users.

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However, TikTok said that it is a victim of "fundamental misconceptions" that are "driven by wider geopolitics" that regular people are excluded from and that it has started working on a European data security strategy to address the legal issue.

Earlier on Thursday, Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister, declared that the app will be banned "with immediate effect" from the government phones of ministers, advisors, and civil employees following a security review by UK intelligence officers.

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In order for TikTok to access data saved on a user's device, Dowden said that users had to grant permission. This data is then gathered and kept by the corporation and is accessible from China.

By granting these rights, TikTok has access to a variety of information, including contacts, user content, and geolocation data. Given that there was "a specific risk with government devices," Dowden said that this supported the ban.

In recent weeks, as ties with China continued to deteriorate, Britain followed the US, the European Commission, Canada, Belgium, and New Zealand in banning TikTok on government-owned devices. Beijing is an "epoch-defining challenge" to the West, according to a UK foreign policy assessment published earlier this week.

Dowden's announcement represents a significant U-turn from the UK's prior stance. It also came shortly after TikTok claimed that ByteDance, the app's owner, had been warned by Washington to sell the app or risk having it banned from the nation.

(With inputs from agencies)

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