FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams says his office is more of a Twitter office, and that he’d really have no issue if a law comes across his desk later this year that would require anyone in the Commonwealth to remove the TikTok app from their state-issued devices.
“We’ll take a look at the legislation. We’ve not received any particular security concerns from the Commonwealth’s Office of Technology that handles our I.T.,” Mr. Adams said, before stamping the form of another Republican Gubernatorial Primary candidate.
Today in Frankfort, Commissioner of Agriculture Dr. Ryan Quarles, Mayor Alan Keck of Somerset, and Kelly Craft, the former Ambassador to the United Nations, signed the form to officially enter the Republican race. Quarles and Keck were on board with this bill.
“This is something that is not new. We’ve seen it with corporate espionage in agriculture for years,” Commissioner Quarles said. “I think we need to take appropriate steps to make sure we’re not compromising, especially state electronic devices,” he continued.
“What we don’t want is our information to be stolen by China,” Mayor Keck said. “If there’s data that’s sufficient to pass legislation on that, then I don’t have a problem with it,” he added.
Adrienne Southworth, the state senator from District 7, said she’s not a fan of most aspects of social media, and admittedly didn’t know much about the video-sharing app TikTok, but she is well aware of the problem it could cause by being on state-owned devices as the app is owned by China.
“We do all we can to secure, everything, and they’re putting stuff in our chips and then send it over here and we’re getting trojans on our networking space,” she stated of the virus or malware that can infect an electronic device, and steal information from that device.
