Louisiana Bans TikTok on Government Issued Devices

There has been some controversy over the very popular social media app TikTok in recent days.

This concern comes after several lawmakers introduced legislation that would permanently ban TikTok in the United States. The lawmakers are citing the FCC and FBI's concerns over the fact that TikTok may be used to spy on Americans as the reason why this app should not be allowed in America.

While this is a hot topic that many are discussing on social media there really is no clear indication of which way this will go.

However, many states are banning the app from government-issued phones.

Louisiana is one of the latest states to go through with this ban. Secretary of State, Kyle Ardoin sent a letter to Governor John Bel Edwards explaining his position on banning the app from government-issued devices in Louisiana.

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You can read the full letter here:

Dear Governor Edwards:

I write to strongly urge you to ban the use of TikTok on all devices owned or leased by the State of Louisiana, following the lead of Governors in Alabama, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Maryland, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

“In a recent House Homeland Security Committee Hearing, Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI,
expressed concerns that the popular app TikTok, owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, poses a threat to our national security and has the potential to manipulate content. Director Wray further claimed that the Chinese Communist Party could use the app to push influence through the app’s powerful recommendation algorithm and by collecting data that could be used for manipulation or espionage.

A June 14, 2021 article on Time Magazine’s website, entitled TikTok has Started Collecting Your
‘Faceprints’ and ‘Voiceprints.’ Here’s What it Could do With Them, noted that the app’s U.S. privacy policy allows it to automatically collect users’ biometric data. The policy did not state what it intended to do with said date. The app was also forced to pay $92 million to settle a class-action lawsuit when it violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act and the federal Video Privacy Protection Act after it harvested users’ personal data without consent and shared that data with third-parties, some of which are based in China.

As Secretary of State, I have the serious responsibility of protecting voters’ personal identifying
information, which is why I have taken the step of banning the use of TikTok on all devices owned or leasedby my agency. I wholeheartedly believe that doing so on a statewide level would protect our data and reaffirm our commitment to privacy protections for our constituents. Therefore, I urge you to issue a directive banning the use of TikTok on our state government’s devices with immediate effect.

LOUISIANA SECRETARY OF STATE KYLE ARDOIN