Published 12:10 am Thursday, January 5, 2023
By Charlie Drape
SALISBURY — The popular video-sharing app TikTok will no longer be permitted on Rowan County-issued devices like computers and cell phones, and will also be blocked from connecting to any device that is connected to the Rowan County network.
The Rowan County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously in favor of the ban at Monday’s commissioner’s meeting. The only exception is the app will be “allowable for official law enforcement use using dedicated county-owned devices not co-mingled with county network accounts.”
The ban was spearheaded by Rowan County assistant county manager Randy Cress who sent a letter to the commissioners explaining his position.
Part of Cress’s letter reads:
“TikTok can harvest large amount of data from devices it is installed on including when, where and how the user conducts Internet activity and on June 30, 2022, TikTok admitted in a letter to nine United States Senators that China-based employees can access U.S. data, even though that data is stored in the United States. Additionally, under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, all Chinese businesses are required to assist China in intelligence work, including data sharing.”
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., which has a subsidiary that is partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party.
On Dec. 29, 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law H.R. 2617, also known as the “Consolidated Appropriations Act 2023” which contains a division entitled “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” that bans the use of TikTok on federal government devices with an exception for use by law enforcement. Twenty-one U.S. states also have similar bans of the app on government computers.
A list of communications equipment and services deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to United States national security is maintained by the Federal Communications Commission. The list is known as the “Covered List.” Use of any of the equipment or services that is on the list could potentially disqualify the county use of federal grant funding in some cases.
N.C. Governor Roy Cooper has been asked to institute a similar ban across the state for government issued equipment, but to date, he has not acted on that.
County devices will also not be allowed to use hardware, software and services from the following vendors: