khaskhabar.com : Thursday, May 18, 2023 12:02 PM
San Francisco. Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed legislation banning Chinese short-form video platform TikTok in the US state in a bid to protect people from alleged intelligence gathering by China. Montana is the first US state to ban the short video app.
Gianforte tweeted on Wednesday, “To protect the people of Montana and their personal data from the Chinese Communist Party, I have banned Tiktok in Montana.”
The bill bars TikTok’s operations within Montana’s jurisdiction and requires that its app be removed from the Montana Mobile App Store.
Not just TikTok, the governor also banned Telegram Messenger, Chinese app WeChat, Teemu, CapKat and Lemon8.
Gianforte said, Tiktok is just one app linked to foreign opponents. Today I directed the Chief Information Officer of the State to ban any application providing personal information or data to foreign adversaries from the State network.
Montana’s new policy will go into effect June 1.
As noted in the bill, the list of devices that cannot have apps includes all state-issued cell phones, laptops, tablets, desktop computers and other devices that connect to the Internet.
In addition, according to Gianforte, the ban will not only apply to government employees, any third party firm doing business on behalf of or for the state of Montana will not use these apps.
As of December, they already blocked TikTok on government devices or devices connected to state networks, so the policy extends to several other major apps.(IANS)
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