Texas Governor Abbott orders all state agencies to ban use of TikTok on ... trends now
A growing number of states, including Texas, are banning the use of the short-form video app TikTok on government devices because of the likelihood that data from the app is harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.
On Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott became the latest state leader to ban the use of the popular app, following Maryland, South Dakota, South Carolina and Nebraska.
Abbott, a Republican, said, '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.'
Texas Governor Greg Abbott released an order Wednesday about banning TikTok on all government-owned devices in his state
The popular short-form video posting has about 85 million American users and has long been a source of worry for US intelligence officers, who believe China may be harvesting US user data
'While TikTok has claimed that it stores US data within the United States, the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees can have access to US data. It has also been reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizens,' Abbott continued.
He directed Texas state agencies to immediately ban officers and employees from using or downloading TikTok on any government-issued device, which included cell phones, laptops, tablets, and all other devices capable of internet connectivity.
The app, which has long been a trouble spot for the US intelligence community, has 85 million American users and is owned by a Chinese company that employs members of the Chinese Communist Party and has a subsidiary that is partially owned by the CCP.
Members of the US intelligence community have long feared that the Chinese regime could compel TikTok to share American user data with the CCP.
Abbott's declaration follows a similar one from South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, who asked the state's Department of Administration to block access to the app on government devices.
