Republican bastion Washington state may prohibit TikTok

• Washington is considering banning TikTok for government business.
• It will extend a Republican-led campaign.
• Washington state would be the first Democratic stronghold to ban TikTok.

Washington is considering banning TikTok for government business, extending a Republican-led campaign against the Chinese-owned app to one of the most liberal sections of the US.

If it bans the app on government devices, Washington state would be the first Democratic stronghold to ban TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.

At least 19 states, including Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, New Hampshire, Maryland, North Dakota, and Utah, have prohibited or limited the app on government devices.

All of these states have Republican governors, save for conservative Louisiana, which has simply blocked the app on Secretary of State devices.

Louisiana’s Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin asked Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards to prohibit the app Monday.

Al Jazeera got the emails after filing public records requests with all 50 US states and D.C.

Stevens Fox, Washington state’s chief information security officer, said his state was considering banning TikTok.

“Washington may ban agency usage of TikTok. Has this application been risk-assessed? Fox said in a December 9 email obtained from Utah public records.

“Michigan’s @Jack Harris supports banning TikTok due to data mining by transnational threat actors. I wanted to know if anyone had studied the risks and countermeasures of this software.

New Hampshire’s chief information security officer thought a ban was “appropriate.”

“I won’t claim we did a thorough risk assessment on TikTok, but based on the links to the source material in the snippet I’ve been working on, we feel it’s acceptable to ban it,” Weeks said.

It’s unclear whether Washington’s planned restriction would apply to all or some federal equipment.

Washington Technology Solutions spokeswoman Andrew Garber stated the state is reviewing TikTok.

“Washington, like many states, is reviewing TikTok but hasn’t decided,” Garber told Al Jazeera.

Separate legislation to ban TikTok and restrict its usage on government equipment is pending in Congress.

TikTok has received more attention in the US after former President Trump gave ByteDance 90 days to sell its US assets over concerns the Chinese government could access user data.

US President Joe Biden replaced Trump’s executive orders with a larger directive requiring agencies to evaluate the privacy and national security risks of foreign-owned apps.

TikTok insists it stores all US customer data in the US with backups in Singapore, but some Chinese employees have seen US data.

Since then, Facebook has moved all American users’ data to US servers hosted by Texas-based Oracle.

TikTok’s representative was disappointed by the restrictions.

Brown told Al Jazeera that millions of Americans use TikTok to expand their small businesses, attract new audiences, and make a living.

It’s regrettable that states and certain federal officials propagate misinformation to restrict the platform instead of sound policies to advance US national security interests. We’re ready to deploy solutions created by leading national security organizations to secure our platform in the U.S.

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