Australia Bans TikTok On Government Devices Amid ‘Security Concerns’

Australia has banned the use of TikTok on all government devices, citing security fears and advice from national intelligence agencies. 

The ban, which was announced by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on Tuesday, makes Australia the final nation in the “five eyes” intelligence alliance to block the Chinese social media app, following similar crackdowns from the U.S., UK, Canada, and New Zealand in recent months. France, Belgium, and the European Commission have also announced bans on government and staff devices, based on concerns regarding the app’s data security.

Fuelling such fears are suggestions that the Chinese government could use TikTok, owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance Ltd, to harvest user data and exploit it for its own political ends. While TikTok’s privacy policy says it won’t sell personal information to third parties, the company reserves the right to use information internally for business development purposes. 

That could include the involvement of ByteDance, which, as a business with operations in China, could potentially be compelled to hand over information to Chinese intelligence agencies as per a controversial article in the nation’s state security laws. That, in turn, could lead to users’ data and information ending up in the hands of Chinese authorities.

TikTok has rejected such concerns, condemning the bans and insisting that the app does not pose any inordinate threat to users’ security.

“There is no evidence to suggest that TikTok is in any way a security risk to Australians and should not be treated differently to other social media platforms,” TikTok's Australia and New Zealand general manager Lee Hunter said in a statement. “Our millions of Australian users deserve a government which makes decisions based upon facts and who treats all businesses fairly, regardless of country of origin.”

TikTok said it was “extremely disappointed” by Australia's decision, calling it “driven by politics, not by fact.”

Australia’s ban echoes a prohibition that was announced by U.S. president Joe Biden in late December, a move similarly denounced by TikTok as “little more than political theater.”

“The ban of TikTok on federal devices passed in December without any deliberation, and unfortunately that approach has served as a blueprint for other world governments,” a TikTok spokesperson said in February, after the White House ordered federal agencies to remove TikTok from all government-issued devices within 30 days. It also comes a little over a week after TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, was grilled by U.S. lawmakers on the company’s links to China and its risks to national security. Attendees during the five-plus hour Senate hearing seemed unimpressed with Shou’s answers. ​

Meanwhile, Australia’s federal opposition, which has long advocated for government intervention against the app, have suggested the TikTok ban doesn’t go far enough. Following Tuesday’s announcement of the crackdown, shadow cybersecurity minister James Paterson said the opposition would now push for a review on the use of the app on personal devices, and potentially open up the possibility of banning the app nationally.

“It’s good that it’s going to be banned from government devices because it removes that espionage risk to public servants,” Paterson told Sky News. “But the data privacy and security risks and also the foreign interference risks that affect millions of Australians using the platform… have to be dealt with.”

Dreyfus said Australia’s ban “prohibit[s] the TikTok app on devices issued by Commonwealth departments and agencies,” and would come into effect “as soon as practicable.” He further noted that exemptions would be granted exclusively on a case-by-case basis and “with appropriate security mitigations in place.”

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