On Monday, New Jersey and Ohio said they were joining forces with other states and banning the use of TikTok on all devices owned or used by people working in government agencies.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphysaid that in addition to banning the app owned by Chinese technology group ByteDance, software vendors, products and services from more than a dozen vendors, including Huawei, Hikvision, Tencent, ZTE and Kaspersky Lab, are also being banned.
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Murphy's office said the decision to ban TikTok was made because of "national security." Specifically, there is concern that the app collects user data that the Chinese government could demand from ByteDance.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWinealso said that “these covert data privacy and cybersecurity practices pose a national and local threat to safety and cybersecurity.”
TikTok, for its part, said that “the company is disappointed that so many states are enacting policies that will do nothing meaningful to promote cybersecurity in the states and are based on baseless lies about TikTok.”
On Friday, Wisconsin Governor Tony Everssaid he would join forces with other states to ban the use of the popular video app, which has more than 100 million users in the US.
See also: US: House of Representatives staff banned from using TikTok
Republican governors were pioneers in banning TikTok from government devices, while some Democrats started thinking about it a little later.
Calls to ban TikTok from government devices grew after US FBI Director Christopher Wraysaid in November that the app posed a national security. Wray had said at the time that the Chinese government could exploit the popular app to influence users or even control their devices.
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TikTok became particularly popular during the quarantine, but now more and more US states are turning against it, with New Jersey and Ohio now joining the group. On the other hand, for three years, TikTok has been trying to assure Washington that it cannot access the personal data of US citizens and that its content cannot be manipulated by the Chinese government or any other entity under Beijing's influence.
Source: www.reuters.com
