Legislation banning the use of the Tik-Tok app on all state-owned computers, cellphones, tablets, and other devices that can be connected to the internet passed its first legislative hurdle on Wednesday.
The sponsor of Senate Bill 20, Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, presented it before the Senate State and Local Government Committee.
He told the panel Tik-Tok is owned by the Chinese company Byte Dance. “Most Chinese companies are connected directly, or partially owned by the Chinese government. It’s been reported by multiple news sources that Tik-Tok mines huge amounts of private data, which the Chinese government, a foreign adversary of the United States, would have access to.”
According to Mills, the federal government backs up that claim.
“Recently, the FBI had been quoted as saying, ‘The video-sharing app Tik-Tok poses a national security concern. They’ve also been quoted as saying, and giving warnings, that the Chinese could use the app to influence users or control their devices.”
Mills says Tik-Tok is part of a larger Chinese effort to expand extraterritorial control over digital platforms worldwide. “The Chinese government has encouraged Chinese firms to actually engage in national security data gathering, both inside and outside their country.”
He also quoted FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr as saying, “Tik-Tok is not just another video app, it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It harvests swaths of sensitive data this is being accessed by Beijing, according to recent findings.”
According to Mills, the FCC has asked Apple and Google to remove Tik-Tok from their app stores, because of their pattern of data harvesting.
He pointed out, “Nearly half of all the states in the United States have banned Tik-Tok from government devices. In addition, Congress has recently banned the app as well from their devices.”
Gov. Andy Beshear has acted by executive order to ban the use of Tik-Tok on Executive Branch devices, the Legislative Research Commission has done likewise, and the Judicial Branch blocks access to all social media sites, not just Tik-Tok, on their computers. Mills says executive orders last only as long as the person who issues them, so he would like to see it become state law.
The bill cleared the committee without dissent, and now heads to the Senate floor.
View the measure by going to: https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/sb20.html.
By: Tom Latek, Kentucky Today
