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Governor of South Dakota has prohibited state employees from using TikTok on government devices
State Employees from using TikTok: South Dakota’s governor signed an order Tuesday that says state agencies, employees, and contractors can’t use government devices to access TikTok. He did this because of “the growing national security threat” that the Chinese-owned social media platform poses.
In a press release, Governor Kristi Noem said, “South Dakota will not help countries that hate us gather intelligence.” “The Chinese Communist Party uses the information it gets from TikTok and the devices that use the platform to try to control the American people.” The order goes into effect immediately.
It’s not clear how many or if any state employees used TikTok on devices owned by the state. But with this move, Noem is the latest lawmaker to say that the popular short-form video app needs to be dealt with in a tougher way. This could give her some political points.
This year, TikTok has been criticized again after a report from Buzzfeed News in June said that some US user data had been accessed from China many times. Leaked audio recordings of dozens of internal TikTok meetings were used in the reporting. In one of the meetings, a TikTok employee is said to have said, “Everything is seen in China.”
In a response to the report, TikTok previously said it “has consistently maintained that our engineers in locations outside of the US, including China, can be granted access to US user data on an as-needed basis under those strict controls.” A TikTok executive testified before a Senate panel last year that it doesn’t share information with the Chinese government and that a US-based security team decides who can access US user data from China.
Noem said, “We have a serious duty to protect the private information of South Dakotans, so we have to do this right away.” “I hope that other states will follow South Dakota’s example, and I think Congress should also do more.”
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