Donald Trump just signed two presidential decrees Prohibiting the activities of American companies Any transactions with parent companies (ByteDance and Tencent, respectively) related to TikTok and WeChat. Inside 45 daysor September 20, “any action” ByteDance or Tencent vs. WeChat and TikTok “or any [leurs] “Affiliates in connection with any person or property subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” will be banned completely.
TikTok: Microsoft has until September 20 to buy back part of app business
In one of his executive orders, Donald Trump explains: “Distribution in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies based in the People’s Republic of China Continuing to threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States“.Continues on TikTok: “TikTok automatically captures a large amount of information about its usersThis includes data on users’ internet activities, network activities, location data and search history and visits to websites”.
“This data collection poses a threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to access personal and private data about Americans This would potentially allow China to track the locations of federal and contract workers, create personal information dossiers for harassment purposes, and engage in industrial espionage. Farther, The White House has also been critical of the Chinese censorship of Hong Kong when it comes to the Uyghur minority..
He also states that: “This mobile app can also be used for the following purposes: Disinformation campaigns to benefit the Chinese Communist PartyJust like TikTok is posting videos of controversial conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. The criticisms against WeChat are similar. But according to Donald Trump, WeChat “take prisoner [également] Personal and private information about Chinese nationals visiting the United States; It provides the Chinese Communist Party with a mechanism to monitor Chinese citizens enjoying a free society for the first time in their lives.“.
White House threatens to investigate other Chinese apps
To do this he uses the following example (with conditional expressions in the text…): “In 2019, a researcher reportedly discovered a Chinese database containing billions of WeChat messages sent by users not only in China but also in the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and Australia.” These two decrees come at last. Threats from the White House for weeksOn Monday, the White House granted Microsoft the right to buy part of the TikTok app’s operations in order to provide guarantees regarding the processing of Americans’ personal data.
Yet it is a decision accompanied by an ultimatum unprecedented in its brutality: On Monday, Donald Trump announced that the purchase could be made before September 15, but not after that (In fact, the decree extends this deadline by a few days.) ByteDance has no choice, because the group is growing very fast in the United States and already has several thousand employees. But it must also be very expensive for Microsoft, which is preparing to take it over; if TikTok does not list on the stock exchange, its value is estimated to be between $50 and $100 billion. Enough to appreciate the urgency caused by this relatively short delay.
If Microsoft fails to finalize the acquisition of TikTok’s operations in the United States and some Western countries (which seems likely at this stage), The decree may serve as the basis for a request to remove the app from the American Play Store and App Store. The Senate also unanimously voted Thursday to ban TikTok from smartphones of American officials. More sanctions are expected in the coming weeks. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday that the Trump administration plans to target other Chinese apps.
Source : Guard
