New Zealand is the latest country to ban TikTok from government devices

New Zealand has joined a growing list of countries and jurisdictions that have banned certain government devices. Unlike elsewhere, the restriction does not apply to all civil servants. It is limited to devices that have access to New Zealand’s parliamentary network, although the country’s defense force and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said they have banned TikTok on work devices as well.

The ban will take effect until the end of March. However, there may be exceptions for those who need access to TikTok to perform their work.

Officials made the move after advice from cybersecurity experts and conversations between people in the government and with other countries. “Based on this information, the Office has determined that the risks are unacceptable in New Zealand’s current parliamentary environment,” said Parliamentary Office Executive Director Rafael Gonzalez-Montero .

Chris Hipkins, Prime Minister of New Zealand, shed some light on why the country limited the ban to devices connected to the parliamentary network. “Departments and agencies follow the advice of (the government’s Communications Security Bureau) in terms of IT and cyber security policies … we don’t have a common approach across the public sector,” he said.

Earlier this week the UK on government devices. He said users of such devices will only be able to use third-party apps that are on an approved list. Over the past few months, dozens of states have also banned TikTok on devices they own.

As with these other jurisdictions, New Zealand restricts government access to TikTok due to security concerns. Officials in many countries have expressed concern that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance (which is based in Beijing) could be forced to share sensitive user information, such as location data, with China due to alleged national security concerns.

ByteDance has said it will not share user data with China, but US officials say the company would have to legally comply if the government requests the information. TikTok has sought to assuage privacy concerns in the US and Europe by routing traffic from each territory to and conducting third-party and .

TikTok’s problems don’t end with government device bans. This week, the company said the US or TikTok could face a national ban. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has argued that if ByteDance divests from his company, it will not resolve policymakers’ security concerns and that the data protection projects the company has set up in the US and Europe “are the real solutions”. . However, a whistleblower claims that this could theoretically allow China to access US TikTok users’ data anyway.

Meanwhile, reports this week suggested that the FBI and Justice Department were prosecuting four officials who used TikTok to eavesdrop on the whereabouts of two American journalists. ByteDance (two of which were based in China and the others in the US) in December and said people were trying to find the sources of the leaks to reporters.