The President of the the United States of America, Mr Joe Biden’s has made an executive order targeted at safeguarding it’s citizen’s sensitive data. This would force some Chinese apps to implement tougher measures in protecting private information if they intend to remain in the US market.
This is part of the measures needed to keep off foreign adversaries like China and Russia from gaining access to a huge amount of personal and proprietary business informations of the US citizenry.
President Joe Biden’s June 9 order is said to replace Ex-President Donald Trump’s 2020 bans against some popularly known Chinese applications WeChat, owned by Tencent, and ByteDance’s TikTok after US courts halted the ban then.
The Department of Commerce may have to deal with court subpoenas to gain access and recover information about certain smartphone tablets, and desktop computer software applications.
According to reports l, the US agency may negotiate conditions for their usage in the United States or outrightly ban the apps.
US officials have in recent weeks shared many of their concerns in respect of the then Trump’s order banning TikTok, according to an “insider’ report as they fear that China would be opportuned to track down the locations of all US government employees, build dossiers of personal information for the main purpose of blackmail and also conduct corporate espionage.
They have begun speaking with allies about adopting a similar approach. The hope is that partnering countries will also agree on apps that should be banned.
Even though Biden’s order has not made mention of any company’s name, it could in eventuality capture more apps than the Trump bans and even thereby hold up better if ever challenged in court.
Reuters is the first to break the news on details of how the Biden administration plans to enforce the order, which includes seeking support from other countries.
Popular Apps from China are likely to find themselves in the Commerce Department’s crossfire due to the escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Chinese government has the ability to exert control over companies and the number of Chinese apps commonly used by Americans.
Apps like WeChat, TikTok, Ant Group’s Alipay mobile payment app, WeChat Pay, Tencent’s QQ Wallet, Tencent QQ, CamScanner, SHAREit, VMate published by Alibaba Group subsidiary UCWeb and Beijing Kingsoft Office Software’s WPS Office all targeted by the Trump administration in its last months are all also eligible for review by President Biden’s team.
Apps linked to countries such as Iran or Venezuela are already in the “blocked” list because they are under broader sanctions.
Ayoola Faseyi, an Abuja based Journalist with interest in Technology and Politics. He is a versatile writer with articles in many renowned News Journals.
He is the Co-Founder of media brand, The Vent Republic.
