TikTok and other Tencent apps banned on Georgia and New Hampshire state devices - Fortune

Both Republican governors banned the messaging app WeChat and different apps owned by Chinese steadfast Tencent. Sununu went further, banning apps owned by Chinese steadfast Alibaba and telecommunications hardware and smartphones made by Chinese firms including Huawei and ZTE.

Kemp besides banned Telegram, saying its Russian power poses akin risks.

“The authorities of Georgia has a work to forestall immoderate effort to entree and infiltrate its unafraid information and delicate accusation by overseas adversaries specified arsenic the CCP,” Kemp wrote successful a memo, utilizing an acronym for the Chinese Communist Party. “As such, it is our work to instrumentality enactment to sphere the information and information of our authorities against the CCP, entities it controls and different overseas cyberthreats.”

Sununu said the prohibition “will assistance sphere the safety, security, and privateness of the citizens of New Hampshire.”

Kemp cited comments by FBI Director Chris Wray earlier this period that China could usage the app to cod information connected its users that could beryllium utilized for spying operations.

Sununu ordered authorities agencies to region immoderate prohibited bundle oregon hardware wrong 30 days.

Kemp and Sununu are among astatine slightest 14 governors to instrumentality specified an action, portion of a question that besides includes calls for Congress to prohibition the usage of the programs from national authorities computers.

Some agencies swiftly took action. Within an hour, Georgia’s Department of Transportation posted a farewell video connected TikTok to its 2,834 followers, saying “Follow america connected Instagram, we volition nary longer beryllium posting to TikTok! Thank you each for the engagement.” The section had posted much than 80 videos since October 2021.

Andrew Isenhour, a spokesperson for Kemp, said guidelines to beryllium issued by the Georgia Technology Authority aboriginal Thursday would see exceptions that would let instrumentality enforcement agencies and prosecutors to entree the platforms with peculiar permission.

The prohibition volition not use to Georgia nationalist universities, Isenhour said. Many of which usage TikTok to tribunal imaginable caller students and pass with existent students and diversion fans.

Other states that person issued bans including Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Utah.

The U.S. Senate passed a measure successful 2020 to prohibition TikTok, but it ne'er passed the House. Other bills to modulate oregon prohibition TikTok and different apps are besides pending successful Congress. The U.S. equipped forces person prohibited the app connected subject devices.

Critics accidental they fearfulness the Chinese authorities is gaining entree to captious accusation done the exertion and could beryllium utilizing it to dispersed misinformation oregon propaganda.

While determination has been overmuch statement astir whether the Chinese authorities is actively collecting TikTok data, observers accidental TikTok would person to comply with immoderate imaginable requests from Chinese information and quality requests to manus implicit information due to the fact that the company’s proprietor ByteDance, is simply a Chinese company.

ByteDance moved its office to Singapore successful 2020.

TikTok spokesperson Jamal Brown told The Associated Press earlier this period that the bans “are mostly fueled by misinformation astir our company.”

TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas, based successful Los Angeles, has said the institution protects each American users’ information and that Chinese authorities officials person nary entree to it.

Former President Donald Trump issued broad orders against Chinese tech companies that sought to artifact caller users from downloading WeChat and TikTok successful 2020, but mislaid successful court. President Joe Biden has taken a narrower approach, ordering a Commerce Department reappraisal of information concerns. U.S. officials and the institution are present successful talks implicit a imaginable statement that would resoluteness American information concerns.

A researcher with the blimpish Heritage Foundation past period called connected authorities officials to prohibition TikTok from operating wholly successful the United States. But immoderate different experts accidental the menace is overstated and that China gains small vantage from TikTok accusation that isn’t publically available.