The municipality of Groningen is preparing administrators and civil servants for a TikTok ban on the apps and work phones. Earlier, the province also announced that it was working on such a ban.
According to alderman Philip Broeksma, banning TikTok use on business phones can go quickly. “The approach is in preparation. We have read all the messages about this and were already working on it.” Broeksma, who does not use this social medium himself, says that it is technically possible to make downloading TikTok on work phones impossible.
The alderman responded to questions from the D66 party, who pointed to digital security and espionage-sensitive tech platforms such as TikTok. D66 wanted to know whether the municipality, like the province of Groningen, the municipality of Amsterdam and the cabinet, no longer allows apps such as TikTok on municipal devices. The app is owned by a Chinese company.
Spreading disinformation
“We see that several companies and governments have sounded the alarm,” says D66 councilor Maria Martinez Doubiani. “A while ago, the AIVD stated that TikTok is one of the apps that spies on officials or spreads disinformation with offensive cyber programs in other countries. For this reason, the Council of the European Union has decided to remove the TikTok app from all business phones of its staff.”
Like many others, the D66 faction is concerned about the increasing threats to our digital security and the guarantee of the privacy of our officials and residents, says Doubiani. TikTok invariably says those concerns are unfounded. The company says it will never provide data to the Chinese government.