Livingston Parish to consider banning TikTok on government phones, computers

LIVINGSTON PARISH – Lawmakers on Thursday will debate banning TikTok on government computers and cellphones.

That discussion will happen during the parish council meeting, which begins at 6 p.m.. The proposed legislation is authored by Councilman Garry “Frog” Talbert.

It’s the latest move as governmental agencies worry about national security concerns related to the Chinese-owned app.

Late last year, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin has banned TikTok on all office-issued devices. That ban affected 11 cellphones, the Louisiana Illuminator reported. Ardoin also blocked the app from his office’s wifi network and computers.

Louisiana’s Department of Education earlier this year urged schools to remove the app from public devices.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government ordered all federal employees to delete the app from government-issued phones.

The White House is trying to force a sale of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, and more than half of the states in the U.S. have banned the app on government devices.

Talbert, who singled out the Livingston Parish library in the proposed legislation, has had that agency in his sights in recent months, hiring a private investigator to try to access pornography on computers in an effort to expose security issues.