Governor Larry Hogan announced on Tuesday that Maryland will forbid the use of TikTok and some other platforms with Chinese or Russian roots in the state’s executive arm of government. This makes Maryland the latest state to confront the cybersecurity threats posed by the platforms.
According to the Republican governor, the platforms might be used for cyberespionage, government monitoring, and the improper acquisition of sensitive personal data. He, therefore, issued an emergency cybersecurity edict that forbade their usage.
“There may be no greater threat to our personal safety and our national security than the cyber vulnerabilities that support our daily lives,” Hogan said in a statement, adding: “To further protect our systems, we are issuing this emergency directive against foreign actors and organizations that seek to weaken and divide us.”
After South Dakota, Maryland banned Tiktok on all state government devices and networks
The Maryland order comes a week after South Dakota‘s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, forbade state workers and contractors from using TikTok on state-owned devices, citing the app’s connections to China. Republican Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina requested on Monday that TikTok be removed from all state-owned devices from the state’s Department of Administration. In August 2020, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts disabled TikTok on government-owned technology.
The app is also not allowed on military devices according to the US armed forces.
“It is a risk that most governments are starting to realize it’s not worth taking,” said Trenchcoat Advisors co-founder Holden Triplett, a former FBI government official who worked in Beijing and counterintelligence.
Although there is a substantial discussion regarding whether the Chinese government is actively gathering data from TikTok, Triplett claimed that the program has a glaring vulnerability. ByteDance, the business that owns TikTok, must accede to any prospective requests by Chinese security and intelligence agencies for data handover because it is a Chinese corporation, he added. This data may include the whereabouts and contacts of employees.
ByteDance relocated its corporate headquarters from Beijing to London in 2020
In 2020, ByteDance relocated its corporate headquarters to London. According to a recent analysis from the NGO Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy team at New York University, TikTok has struggled to identify advertising that contains blatantly false information about U.S. elections.
The worries regarding driving restrictions, according to TikTok spokeswoman Jamal Brown, “are largely fueled by misinformation about our company.”
“We are always happy to meet with state policymakers to discuss our privacy and security practices,” Brown said. “We are disappointed that the many state agencies, offices, and universities that have been using TikTok to build communities and connect with constituents will no longer have access to our platform.”
Los Angeles-based COO claims data is protected and no one from the Chinese government has access
According to Los Angeles-based TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas, all American users’ data is protected by the company, and no one from the Chinese government has access to it.
Tuesday also saw Republican lawmakers from Wisconsin ask Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to remove the video platform TikTok from all state-owned devices, citing a threat to national security.
“Wisconsinites expect their governor to be aware of the dangerous national security threats TikTok poses and to protect them from this avenue for CCP intelligence operations,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Reps. Mike Gallagher, Tom Tiffany, Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, and Scott Fitzgerald said in a letter. Last month, Gallagher collaborated with Florida’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio on an opinion post urging governments to outlaw TikTok.
Britt Cudaback, a spokesperson for Evers, said the administration “very seriously” considers cybersecurity issues and frequently works with counterintelligence experts, the FBI, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security when making decisions about state government equipment.
“We will continue to defer to the judgment and advice of law enforcement, cybersecurity, and counterintelligence experts regarding this and other evolving cybersecurity issues,” Cudaback said.