The US and Canada are the latest to ban the Chinese-owned social media app from government-issued devices, citing espionage concerns. So how serious is the threat? And should TikTok users who don’t work for the government be worried, too?
•Why is the US blocking TikTok?
The White House said Monday it is giving US federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices.
•Reason?
>Due to concerns that TikTok parent company ByteDance would provide user data – such as browsing history and location – to the Chinese government or push propaganda and disinformation on its behalf.
>The FBI and Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.
>A law China introduced in 2017 requires companies to provide the government with any personal data relevant to the country’s national security.
In July 2022, TikTok admitted in response to a letter from Shadow Cyber Security Secretary James Paterson that its employees in China had accessed Australian data.
The company’s Australian director of public policy, Brent Thomas write:
“Our security teams minimize the number of people who have access to data, limiting it to only the people who need that access to do their jobs,” wrote. We have never provided Australian user data to the Chinese government, we have never been asked for Australian user data by the Chinese government, and we would not provide it if asked.”
The US nationwide bill to ban TikTok is expected to move forward
On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee was expected to move forward with a bill that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok from all US devices. That’s an estimated 130 million US users.
The ban would require approval by the entire House and Senate before the president could sign it. The legislation was proposed by Congressman Mike McCaul and seeks to avoid challenges the administration would face in court if it moved forward with sanctions against the company.
“My bill empowers the administration to ban TikTok or any software applications that threaten America’s national security,” McCaul said.
TikTok says it will never hand over Australian data to the Chinese government, despite laws forcing it to do so.Asked whether Washington would ban TikTok entirely, Mr. Biden said: “I’m not sure. I know I don’t have it on my phone.”
The bill was rejected by some organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union. In a letter sent to Mr McCaul on Monday, she said a nationwide ban on TikTok would be unconstitutional and “likely to result in the banning of many other businesses and apps”.
Did TikTok respond?
TikTok said the concerns were fueled by misinformation and denied using the app to spy on Americans. In December, TikTok commented on earlier actions by Congress to ban federal employees from using the app, saying it was “disappointed”.
She called the move “a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests — rather than encourage the administration to close the national security review.”
Could TikTok be banned in Australia?
Home Secretary and Cyber Security Secretary Clare O’Neil told the 7:30 Report last week “The government is not currently considering banning TikTok, TikTok is one of the most popular apps in Australia, particularly popular with young Australians. It’s not on the table at the moment.”
Although some experts think we’re not far off – like Patrik Wikstrom, director of the Queensland University of Technology’s Center for Digital Media Research.
He says “Australia often follows these kinds of decisions made in the US, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happened here in Australia.”
Professor Wikstrom says many suspicions have arisen from the technology war between the US and China. While Professor Wikstrom admitted that TikTok has been at the forefront of many scandals, he also believed that the bans stemmed from “suspicion”.
One of those scandals was from December 2022, when ByteDance said it fired four employees who had access to data on two journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times while trying to track down the source of a leaked report about the company.
