Credit: Fox Business
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has just issued a statewide security plan than bans the use of TikTok on state devices. It also prohibits any state contractors from doing state business using a device that has TikTok on it.
The governor released a plan to take aggressive action against the Chinese app in December 2022. In early 2023, many Texas universities began to restrict access to the app on their networks. Now, Texas has released a detailed plan to implement TikTok’s restrictions.
“The security risks associated with the use of TikTok on devices used to conduct the important business of our state must not be underestimated or ignored,” said Governor Abbott.
The plan is five parts and is called the Model Security Plan for Prohibited Technologies. This plan will prevent the downloading or use of TikTok, along with “prohbited technologies” that pose a threat to the state of Texas.
This applies to “all state agencies and institutions of higher education (IHEs), including their employees, contractors, interns, or any users of state-owned networks.”
“Other prohibited technologies listed in the statewide model plan also produce a similar threat to the security of Texans,” the governor said.
“It is critical that state agencies and employees are protected from the vulnerabilities presented by the use of this app and other prohibited technologies as they work on behalf of their fellow Texans,” he added.
The Blaze reported:
Any device that is connected to the internet is included in the ban, and every institution’s IT department is expected to “strictly enforce” it.
As well, any employee or contractor to the state is prohibited from conducting state business on any device that contains prohibited technologies. For anyone who must use a personal device for state-contracted work, the governor’s office has outlined a “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program” in the directive.
The plan also requires sensitive locations, meetings, and personnel within an agency to be identified and subsequently shielded from any personal devices with the prohibited technology. Personal devices are essentially banned in certain sensitive areas.
“Owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members,” the governor continued, “TikTok harvests significant amounts of data from a user’s device, including details about a user’s internet activity.”
Texas plans to offer a few, very limited exceptions to the ban.
Federal lawmakers are also proposing a national ban on TikTok for devices in the United States, after they passed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act in December 2022.
TikTok is used by around 80 million people in the United States and is owned by ByteDance.
Critics of the bans say that TikTok collects no more data than any other U.S. social media giant like Meta or Twitter. Experts also say that China can still buy U.S. user data on the open market through data brokers.
