After the United States and Canada, the United Kingdom wants to ban the installation of the TikTok application on work devices given to civil servants. Again the security excuse of avoiding snooping will be used to ban applications that are now seen as kryptonite by governments allied with the United States.
In the first draft, only installations on government-owned work devices would be charged but there were suggestions it would also cover personal devices used by civil servants. This widespread ban forced TikTok to separate their business from Bytedance.
Until now there have been accusations that TikTok's parent company Bytedance shared data with China. Charges that have been repeatedly denied with user data in the U.S. have been moved to Oracle's player as a security measure. However, the United States will now pass the RESTRICT Act which gives the government the power to ban applications from abroad such as TikTok that are seen as a security risk.
It's not just the U.S. that fears being a victim of espionage. China itself has blocked the construction of an undersea internet cable across the South China Sea out of concern that it could be used by Western countries to spy on their internet traffic.