US President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he had revoked and replaced the decrees issued by his predecessor Donald Trump to ban the platforms TikTok, WeChat and eight other applications.
Instead, it calls for a broad investigation into the risks posed by Internet applications owned by certain foreign powers.
The new executive order seeks to identify all "connected software applications that may pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and the American people," including "applications owned, controlled or managed by individuals who support military activities or intelligence from another country, or are involved in malicious cyber activities, or involve applications that collect sensitive personal data ”.
It calls on the Commerce Department and other federal agencies to develop guidelines "to protect sensitive personal data ... including personally identifiable information and genetic information" from abuse.
Companies deny espionage accusations
Donald Trump claimed Chinese-owned apps posed national security risks and sought to force the sale of TikTok to US investors.
He accused WeChat, a platform ubiquitous in the lives of Chinese through its messaging, remote payments or reservations services, and TikTok, a short video app particularly popular among young people, of collecting confidential data, before going on. share them with Beijing.
These companies have always refuted these espionage accusations.
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A legal battle then followed.
At the end of December, the Trump administration appealed a court ruling preventing the Commerce Department from imposing restrictions on TikTok, which would have resulted in the ban of the social network in the United States.
But in February, the Biden administration asked the Court of Appeals to give it 60 days to study the case and rule on whether or not to uphold the Trump administration's request.
