The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has concluded that federal employees may use the restructured U.S. version of TikTok on government devices, subject to each agency's policies and discretion.

Congress prohibited TikTok and ByteDance-controlled successor services from federal technology in 2022 because of national-security concerns. The new opinion says the ban no longer reaches TikTok USDS after a January restructuring left ByteDance with a 19.9 percent minority stake and placed control with a U.S.-based joint venture governed by a majority-American board.

The opinion relies on representations that U.S. user data is protected in Oracle's U.S. cloud, that unauthorized ByteDance personnel cannot directly retrieve it and that the joint venture is retraining and updating the recommendation system on U.S. data. Those are the safeguards described to the government; publication of the opinion does not independently audit their performance.

The decision changes the federal government's legal interpretation of the 2022 ban, but it does not require every agency to install the app or override other cybersecurity and workplace rules.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel ↗

Source: Reuters ↗