State Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, introduced a bill Wednesday that would ban certain social media apps from state-owned or state-issued devices such as cellphones after a significant data breach occurred in December.
With Senate Bill 74, Dodd seeks to prohibit use on state devices of “high-risk” apps such as TikTok, which has raised concern among authorities such as FBI Director Christopher Wray, who warned that the Chinese-owned company could pose a cybersecurity threat and be used for espionage.
In December, a ban on high-risk social media apps such as TikTok on federal devices went into effect.
“Social media apps are ubiquitous in our daily lives,” Dodd said in a statement, “but there is growing concern about information theft and data collection that comes with their use.”
Dodd said he was concerned about “bad actors” accessing state-associated devices to get to sensitive information or tracking data, as well as the risk of data breaches.
Dodd’s office said that the California Office of Emergency Services (OES) revealed a cybersecurity incident in the Department of Finance. OES released a statement about the issue in December but declined to give specifics, other than to say that it was a cybersecurity “intrusion” significant enough to mobilize multiple public and private agencies, from the California Highway Patrol to the California Military Department, which oversees the National Guard.
According to Dodd, a global ransomware group was behind the intrusion and stole 76 gigabytes of data.
Dodd already has the support of the Consumer Federation of California, which “welcomes a comprehensive approach to this issue,” according to executive director Robert Herrell.
10 comments
There’s no need to enact a new law for that. Just have the CA IT department delete them from the cell phones.
I shudder at the ignorance of legislators when it comes to technology. We’re already plagued with stupid “do gooder” rules daily the result of their ignorance and stupidity.
But this way, they get to form a “Department of High-Risk Social Media” that will oversee the ever-evolving list of approved and unapproved apps. Think of all the jobs that will be created.
Ban it from all devices.
This will be nearly impossible to detect and handle. The largest threat vector is the development kits used to build apps. The reason those kits are low cost or free to developers is that they inject their own code into the apps that you build. The problem is that it’s difficult to determine which kit was used to built an app. People creating their own apps have no way of detecting or determining of the app-builder kit they are using is trustworthy and will remain so. A workaround that is available now is a 100% ban on the the use of smartphones and computers.
We need a law? Just update the Govt. employee cell phone policy and have IT delete any unwanted apps and prevent anyone from adding them in the future.
Shocked, I’m shocked I tell you that it wasn’t Weiner that proposed this!
Agree, it was tongue in cheek.
First of all why are they even allowed on a work provided piece of technology. They are for business not play time. When I worked for large companies that provided computers and cell phones we were not allowed to add any apps to them since they for work business only
Because facebook, instagram, tick tok, twitter and valuable propaganda tools that the illegitimate government needs to control the masses thoughts. The real app they should all be on is only fans. As they are no different then the “ladies” who use it.
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