Chinese Apps Should Be Removed From U.S. App Store, Pompeo Says

Nikki Attkisson | Last Updated : August 6, 2020

Chinese Apps Should Be Removed From U.S. App Stores, Pompeo Says
On Wednesday Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo said that The United States wants “untrusted” Chinese apps removed from U.S. app stores, by calling out popular Chinese-owned apps TikTok and WeChat. And he also mentioned that some companies should limit their apps from phones made by Huawei Technologies. His words were like this “With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok, WeChat and others are significant threats to the personal data of American citizens,” not to mention tools for content censorship.

As a part of the “clean network” initiative, the State Department would work with other government agencies to protect the data of U.S. citizens and American intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, by preventing access from cloud-based systems run by companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom, and Tencent, Pompeo said.

Chinese Apps Should Be Removed From U.S. App Store, Pompeo Says

 

In an interview, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said the United States “has no right” to set up the “Clean Network” and calls the actions by Washington as “a textbook case of bullying”. “Anyone can see through clearly that the intention of the U.S. is to protect its monopoly position in technology and to rob other countries of their proper right to development,” Wang said.

Currently, the Tiktok faces a deadline of Sept. 15 to either sell its U.S. operations to Microsoft Corp or face an outright ban. And Pompeo also mentioned that to terminate authorizations for China Telecom and three other companies to provide services to and from the United States, he was joining Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf in urging the U.S. telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission. He also mentioned in his statement that the State Department was also working to ensure China could not compromise information carried by undersea cables that connect the United States to the global internet.

On Wednesday Pompeo’s comments, many were reflected a wider and more accelerated push by Washington to limit the access of Chinese technology companies to U.S. market and consumers and, as one U.S. official put it, to push back against a “massive campaign to steal and weaponize our data against us.” And the state department has reported that momentum for the Clean Network program was growing and more than 30 countries and territories were now “Clean Countries” and many of the world’s biggest telecommunications companies “Clean Telcos.”

And the Pompeo’s remarks an escalation in President Donald Trump’s push to clamp down on Chinese technology, which the White House says is a threat to national security. But Trump is is pushing for TikTok to be shut down or sold after because of its ownership by China’s ByteDance, and he also warned the video app must sell its U.S. business by Sept. 15 or be banned in the U.S.

This is called as allies “to join the growing tide to secure our data from the CCP’s surveillance state and other malign entities.” Huawei Technologies and Tencent have declined to comment and at the same time Alibaba, Apple, China Telecom, China Mobile, and Baidu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.


Nikki Attkisson

With over 15 years as a practicing journalist, Nikki Attkisson found herself at Powdersville Post now after working at several other publications. She is an award-winning journalist with an entrepreneurial spirit and worked as a journalist covering technology, innovation, environmental issues, politics, health etc. Nikki Attkisson has also worked on product development, content strategy, and editorial management for numerous media companies. She began her career at local news stations and worked as a reporter in national newspapers.

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