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New
Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said in addition to
banning the short-video app owned by Chinese technology
conglomerate ByteDance from state devices he also was banning
software vendors, products, and services from more than a dozen
vendors including Huawei, Hikvision, Tencent Holdings, ZTE
Corporation and Kaspersky Lab.
Murphy's office said "there have been national security concerns
about user data the Chinese government might require ByteDance
to provide."
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said in his order
"these surreptitious data privacy and cybersecurity practices
pose national and local security and cybersecurity threats to
users of these applications and platforms and the devices
storing the applications and platforms."
TikTok said it was "disappointed that so many states are jumping
on the political bandwagon to enact policies that will do
nothing to advance cybersecurity in their states and are based
on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok."
On Friday, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said he planned to join
other states in banning use of the popular video app that has
more than 100 million U.S. users.
Republican governors have led the charge to ban TikTok from
state devices and some Democratic governors have been slower to
do so.
Calls to ban TikTok from government devices gained steam after
U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray said in November it poses
national security risks. Wray flagged the threat that the
Chinese government could harness the app to influence users or
control their devices.
Reuters reported Friday that TikTok has put on hold a hiring
process for consultants that would help it implement a potential
security agreement with the United States, two people familiar
with the matter said, as more U.S. officials oppose such a deal.
For three years, TikTok has been seeking to assure Washington
that the personal data of U.S. citizens cannot be accessed and
its content cannot be manipulated by China's Communist Party or
any other entity under Beijing's influence.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by David Gregorio and
Christopher Cushing)
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