Ricketts Announces Ban on Tiktok App on State Owned Devices

LINCOLN – Today, Governor Pete Ricketts announced that the State of Nebraska will block the TikTok software application on all State-owned electronic devices due to security concerns.
“The Chinese government has long engaged in systematic, covert efforts to access sensitive data from U.S. governments, companies, and individuals,” said Gov. Ricketts.  “As an app owned by a company based in China, TikTok is legally obligated to provide data from its users to the country’s communist regime upon request.”
TikTok calls these claims of data funneling “unfounded,” saying that U.S. user data is stored on servers within the United States, which would not be beholden to Chinese law. Tiktok has recently hired an American CEO and states that it has “never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked.” Although TikTok is owned by a Chinese company named ByteDance, TikTok does not operate in China and functions as a wholly independent subsidiary.
China’s national security laws contain more gray areas than many U.S. lawmakers realize, according to Samm Sacks who is a senior fellow at Yale Law School. Sacks has studied these Chinese laws extensively, and testidied before the Senate at a hearing related to the issue in March. Even Chinese companies within China itself have successfully resisted or thrown up roadblocks to Beijing’s demands for data in the past, Sacks told lawmakers.
Ricketts is unconvinced. “To maintain the security of data owned by the State of Nebraska, and to safeguard against the intrusive cyber activities of China’s communist government, we’ve made the decision to ban TikTok on State devices.”