Story by David Beard, The Dominion Post
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A House committee on Tuesday gave its blessing to a Senate bill to change vehicle inspections to every two years, and approved the House version of the TikTok ban bill.
The inspection bill is SB 254, taken up in House Technology and Infrastructure.
SB 254 changes the annual inspection to biannual and raises the sticker price from $3 to $6 to reflect that. The total price, including the sticker, would go from $14 to $19.
The sticker is currently $11, which would put the total new cost at $17, but the Senate added $2 to account for inflation.
The new policy and price would take effect in 2024.
Previous Senate discussion of the bill revealed that West Virginia is one of only 19 states to require an annual inspection of any kind; five others do it every two years. West Virginia is one of only four states that require a purely safety check. Some other states require other kinds of inspections, such as emissions. Ten states require no inspections at all.
The bill also includes a section amended in on the Senate floor dealing with registration plates for antique military vehicles.
The committee approved the bill without debate. It goes next to Finance.
TikTok bans
Both TikTok bills advanced on Tuesday.
The Senate’s bill, SB 426, says that the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) will develop standards regarding banned high-risk technology platforms or products. All levels of government – local governments, K-12 schools, higher education, and state entities – must enforce those standards.
In addition, all levels of government “must remove, restrict, and ban those high-risk technology platforms or products that pose a cybersecurity threat from all government systems, services, networks, devices, or locations.”
A Judiciary Committee tweak of the bill added a specific reference to TikTok.
The bill was on second reading on the Senate floor and was amended to fix a problem in the original. The floor amendment adds exceptions for use of those platforms for law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, security research, investigative efforts, and for purposes related to litigation involving the state or one of its agencies or officers.
Judiciary chair Charles Trump, R-Morgan, said that those exceptions were needed because law enforcement uses TikTok and other platforms in its investigations and the bill would have banned it, hampering their work.
This bill will be on third reading for passage on Wednesday.
House Technology advanced HB 2898 after lengthy discussion. Committee counsel explained that the bill was retooled to match the latest Senate version, but with a couple additional tweaks.
One, out of concern for separation of powers, the House bill simply recommends that agencies in the legislative and judicial branches adopt the standards and practices put forth by the CISO.
Two, it removes the specific reference to TikTok. Counsel said this was done to keep the bill more timeless – citing assorted outmoded platforms such as Myspace that have no meaning to anyone anymore.
CISO Danielle Cox fielded some questions about the bill. She said that TikTok in particular contains and monitors an excessive amount of data about users movements and relationships that goes directly to the Communist Chinese government. That opens up cyberthreats of bribery, election manipulation and more.
TikTok isn’t theonly platform or technology of concern, she said. Her office and other state CISOs work with the federal government, which uses threat intelligence to review an ever-changing array of apps to see how data is being used.
Delegate John Williams, D-Monongalia, proposed an amendment to exclude higher education institutions from the ban, saying the ban might serve as a student recruitment deterrent.
Cox said some institutions already have such bans, but it’s not consistent. She didn’t know WVU’s policy, when that question came up.
Delegates learned that the ban would only affect institutions’ WiFi networks, which wouldn’t prohibit students from accessing TikTok through their cell phone data. But however TikTok is accessed, the Chinese can still coolect user data and see who else is on the network
The amendment failed and the members passed the bill unanimously. It now heads to the full House.