Maine’s new laws prohibiting government officials from using or purchasing Chinese hardware and other technology are officially in effect.

New Maine Office of Information Technology (Maine IT) requirements, passed this year with bipartisan support in the state legislature, went into effect last week.

The office released the first version of a list of IT products, companies and websites from adversary foreign states such as China from which Maine will not purchase goods or services.

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“Under the new law, MaineIT will maintain on its publicly accessible website a list of prohibited technologies and services that have been identified by federal law, regulation, or other binding operating directives of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or another appropriate federal agency as posing a risk to national security or the safety of persons in the United States,” said Nick Marquis, Maine’s chief information officer, in an internal memo.

The list of companies with which government agencies are no longer allowed to sign contracts includes Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies and, most notably, ByteDance, the Chinese company behind the social media platform TikTok. TikTok sparked public controversy after federal authorities attempted to ban it due to significant security risks.

List of prohibited technologies:

• Dahua Technology Company
• Huawei Technologies Company
• Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company
• Hytera Communications Corporation
• SZ DJI technology company
• ZTE Corporation
• China Mobile International USA Inc.
• China Telecom (Americas) Corp.
• Pacific Networks Corp and its wholly owned subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC
• China Unicom (Americas) Operations Limited
• AO Kaspersky LabKaspersky Lab, Inc.
• TikTok or any successor application or service developed or provided by ByteDance Limited or a company owned by ByteDance Limited.

Maine IT clarified that the list should be interpreted to include all subsidiaries or affiliates of the prohibited companies and that it is not an exhaustive list covering the entire universe of persona non grata Chinese companies are much larger.

The state is also prohibited from entering into contracts with technology companies from enemy countries such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. However, state agencies can continue to use technology that they acquired from a banned company before the new law came into force.

The new rules provide some exceptions for cases where the technology might be necessary, such as if law enforcement needed to use TikTok to gather evidence for an investigation.

The new rules became law after being proposed by Senator Lisa Keim (R-Oxford), who wanted to prevent China or other foreign adversaries from exerting influence over Maine’s local government.

The driving force behind the technology restrictions is the growing threat from Chinese state and non-state forces, both in terms of national security and industrial espionage.

Governments around the world have expressed concern that Chinese-made technology could act as a Trojan horse, allowing malicious actors to gain access to key networks to conduct surveillance and sabotage.

Experts who study the national security threats posed by Chinese technology used by the U.S. government point to the communist country’s 2017 “National Intelligence Law,” which requires all Chinese technology companies to comply with government orders, including orders to steal information.

Interestingly, the China Tech Threat expert group that testified for the bill reported that well-known Chinese computer company Lenovo also steals information for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but this company was not included on the list.

Also not on the list: Chinese manufacturers of solar power modules.

When Senator Keim’s bill was considered in the Maine House of Representatives in April, it received unanimous support from the legislators. However, it was less enthusiastic from Governor Janet Mills (D-Maine), who allowed the bill to become law without her signature, a decision that seemed to indicate that she had some reservations about the safety measures.