March 6, 2023
PETA CREDLIN: Senator James Paterson, Liberal Senator, Cyber Security Shadow Minister and Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, Senator, great to have you on the program. TikTok. Why has it taken us so long?
PATERSON: Peta, thanks for having me. Really, there's no excuse anymore. In July last year, TikTok admitted to me in correspondence that Australian user data is accessible and has been accessed in mainland China. And when I received that correspondence, I immediately forwarded it to the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security, Clare O'Neil, and I asked the government to act on it to protect Australians. Well, nothing has happened in the eight months since then. And what we've also had in the meantime is an admission from TikTok that they used their application to spy on a journalist in the United States who had been writing critical articles about them to try and physically co-locate them with TikTok employees to identify that journalist's sources. So, from December onwards, when that was revealed, there really was no excuse for inaction. And yet that's all we've had from this government even now in the last month, when the US government, the Canadian government, the European Commission, the Danish, many others have
banned it from government devices. Again, the Albanese government has taken no action on this.
CREDLIN: Are we confident that TikTok is the only app of concern, or should we go more broadly and ban all apps on devices owned by the government?
PATERSON: Unfortunately, it's not just TikTok, which is a problem. Really, all social media apps that are headquartered in authoritarian countries, and typically that is China, because they're a very big app maker and app market, pose a degree of risk to us. Some greater degrees of risk because they're very popular, like TikTok or because they store incredibly sensitive or collect incredibly sensitive information on their users or others because they have a particular stranglehold, for example, on diaspora communities like the WeChat application does in the case of the Chinese Australian community. All of them pose risks and all of them need a response from the government to protect not just government users but the wider public. Because it is their data which is being harvested, which can be accessed and handed over to the Chinese Communist Party. And it is them who are potentially being interfered with and influenced covertly by a foreign authoritarian government.
CREDLIN: James, we don't often see this but you're in Opposition and you've driven change here about these security surveillance cameras in government departments. You've driven change now about TikTok. What else concerns you that you want changed?
PATERSON: Peta, I'm really concerned about the Australian government's exposure more generally to Chinese technology companies. And the reason for that is that all Chinese companies are effectively beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. Under China's intelligence law of 2017 every Chinese citizen and Chinese company must assist Chinese intelligence agencies if asked in their work, in their intelligence and spy work. And so, we would never know if a Chinese technology company, which is prevalent here in Australia, is secretly cooperating with the Chinese government and handing over our information. Now, obviously, given the state of the bilateral relationship between Australia, obviously, given the posture of the Chinese Communist Party towards Australia and the region where they're trying to economically coerce and covertly influence us, it's just an unacceptable risk to present to the Australian public and it has to be addressed in a systematic way. So, you're right, I've called out Hikvision and Dahua, I'm calling out TikTok and WeChat and unfortunately there's a long list of other companies that I'm going to have to turn my attention to next. I hope the government responds.
CREDLIN: Please keep it up. Senator Paterson. Thank you.
ENDS
