CNN Business
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South Dakota’s governor signed an govt order on Tuesday banning state companies, staff and contractors from getting access to TikTok on executive gadgets, mentioning “the growing national security threat” posed via the Chinese-owned social media platform.
“South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us,” Gov. Kristi Noem mentioned in a press unlock. “The Chinese Communist Party uses information that it gathers on TikTok to manipulate the American people, and they gather data off the devices that access the platform.”
The order is going into impact in an instant.
It’s unclear if many, or any, state staff had been actively the usage of TikTok on state-owned gadgets. But with the transfer, Noem is the most recent lawmaker to induce for harder motion to be taken towards the preferred short-form video app, probably scoring some political issues within the procedure.
There has been renewed complaint of TikTok this 12 months, stemming from a Buzzfeed News record in June that mentioned some US person knowledge has been again and again accessed from China. The reporting cited leaked audio recordings of dozens of inside TikTok conferences, together with one the place a TikTok worker allegedly mentioned, “Everything is seen in China.”
In a reaction to the record, TikTok in the past mentioned 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 govt testified sooner than a Senate panel closing 12 months that it doesn’t percentage data with the Chinese executive and {that a} US-based safety workforce makes a decision who can get right of entry to US person knowledge from China.
“Because of our serious duty to protect the private data of South Dakota citizens, we must take this action immediately,” Noem mentioned. “I hope other states will follow South Dakota’s lead, and Congress should take broader action, as well.”
– CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this record.
