Government Greg Gianforte on Wednesday signed a first-of-its-kind bill banning TikTok from operating in the state, raising a potential legal battle with the company amid many questions about whether the state can enforce the law at all. law.
The new rules in Montana will have more far-reaching implications than the TikTok bans already in place on government devices in nearly half of the US states and federal government. There are 200,000 TikTok users in Montana, as well as 6,000 businesses that use the video-sharing platform, according to company spokesman Jamal Brown.
Here’s what you need to know:
Why is Montana banning Tiktok?
Proponents of the law in Montana argue that the Chinese government may be collecting US user data from TikTok and using the platform to spread pro-Beijing misinformation or messages to the public.
This reflects arguments put forward by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the US Senate, as well as the heads of the FBI and CIA, all of whom have said TikTok could pose a national security risk because its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance is run by China. law.
Critics have pointed to China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which obliges companies to cooperate with governments in dealing with government intelligence. Another Chinese law, enacted in 2014, has similar mandates.
TikTok says he was never asked to hand over his data and would not have done so if asked.
How does Montana plan to ban Tiktok?
The law bans TikTok downloads in the state and fines any “organization” — app store or TikTok — $10,000 a day for every time someone accesses TikTok, “offers the opportunity” to access it, or downloads it.
This means that Apple and Google, who operate the app stores on Apple and Android devices, will be liable for any breaches. Penalties will not apply to users.
The statewide ban won’t go into effect until January 2024. It will be void if the social media platform is sold to a company that is not based “in any country designated by the federal government as a foreign adversary.”
The governor has indicated he wants to expand the bill to other social media apps to address some of the bill’s “technical and legal issues”. But the legislature delayed the meeting before sending him the bill, which meant he could not propose his amendments.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen pointed to the technology being used to restrict online sports gambling applications as a way to restrict TikTok’s operation in the state. Anyone can report these violations. And once the state confirms that a violation has occurred, it sends a cease and desist letter to the company concerned, said Kyler Nerison, a spokesman for Knudsen’s office. He said different companies use different methods to ensure compliance, and they themselves should “not allow their apps to run in Montana and other states where they’re illegal.”
So, can a TikTok ban work?
Other than avoiding a fine, there is nothing to incentivize the companies involved to comply, cybersecurity experts say, and it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to enforce the law properly.
First, the US has nothing like the type of control that countries like China have over what their citizens access online. To make matters worse, ISPs are out of the loop.
Before Montana’s law was passed, lawmakers rewrote parts of the bill to exempt them from liability after an AT&T lobbyist said during a February hearing that the law was “unfit” to pass.
Can tech companies block it?
Apple and Google did not oppose the law. But a spokesman for TechNet, a trade group that includes the two tech giants, said that app stores don’t have the ability to “geo-fence” apps across states and it would be impossible to prevent Montana from downloading TikTok. . The group also said that it should be the responsibility of the app, not the app store, to determine where it can work.
Telecommunications analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics believes app stores could have the ability to enforce the law, but that would be cumbersome to implement and full of loopholes. Address-based Apple and Google billing can be bypassed with prepaid cards, and IP geolocation is easily masked with a VPN service that can change IP addresses and allows users to bypass content restrictions, said mobile security expert Will Fear, founder Guardian, which makes a privacy app for Apple devices.
Oded Vanunu, head of product vulnerability research at cybersecurity firm Check Point, agreed that it would be difficult for app stores to isolate a single state from an app download. based on geographic location or IP addresses” of users.
Can Tiktok block itself?
When users allow TikTok to collect their location information, it can track a person at least 1.16 square miles away from their actual location. If this feature is disabled, TikTok may still collect approximate location information, such as the region, city, or postal code that a user may be based in, based on device or network information, such as an IP address.
But, as with app stores, cybersecurity experts point out that any enforcement measures a company uses can be easily bypassed with a VPN, and attempts to use IP geolocation can lead to other problems.
David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University, said cell service providers could use the same types of IP addresses for multiple states, which could mean someone who isn’t in Montana could be mistakenly blocked from using TikTok.
What will happen next?
Most likely a lawsuit.
Mr. Knudsen, Montana’s attorney general, has already said he expects the law to go to trial.
TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter said in a prepared statement on Wednesday that the law violates Montanan’s free speech rights and is illegal.
“We want to reassure Montana residents that they can continue to use TikTok to express themselves, earn money, and find community as we continue to work to protect the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana,” Ms. Oberwetter said.
Ms Oberwetter declined to say whether the company would take legal action, but spoke of some legal issues. She argued that Montana was trying to circumvent US foreign policy by arguing that the bill eliminated a national security threat. She said that laws on foreign policy and national security are not passed at the state level.
NetChoice, the trade group that represents TikTok and other tech companies, says the bill would violate the First Amendment and “custodial statute” laws that prevent the government from imposing punishment on a specific organization without a formal legal process.
The story was reported by the Associated Press.