Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday ordered all state agencies to ban employee use of TikTok on government-issued devices, joining a growing number of GOP governors who have taken action against the Chinese-owned social media platform.
In a letter to Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, Abbott urged him to pass legislation that would permanently codify the directive and ensure that there are similar requirements for local governments.
"TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users' devices — including when, where and how they conduct Internet activity — and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government," the governor wrote. "While TikTok has claimed that it stores U.S. data within the U.S., the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees can have access to U.S. data.
"It has also been reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizens," Abbott continued. "Further, under China's 2017 National Intelligence Law, all businesses are required to assist China in intelligence work including data sharing, and TikTok's algorithm has already censored topics politically sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party, including the Tiananmen Square protests."
With more than 85 million U.S. users, the video-sharing app is owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members and has a subsidiary owned, in part, by the CCP, the governor's office said.
Abbott joins Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who banned the use of TikTok for state agencies on Tuesday, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who also prohibited TikTok for state employees and contractors last month.
Government-issued cellphones, laptops, tablets, desktop computers and other devices capable of internet connectivity are included in Abbott's ban. The governor also ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Information Resources to jointly develop a plan by Jan. 15 that would address vulnerabilities presented by the use of TikTok on personal devices. Each state agency will then have until Feb. 15 to implement its own policy concerning TikTok use on personal devices.
The app is especially popular among younger Americans, raising concerns about the collection of data related to minors.
According to The Hill, Director of National Security Avril Haines warned last week that parents should be worried about the use of TikTok, while a member of the Federal Communications Commission called for the social media platform to be banned last month.
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