April 4, 2023
Tuesday 4 April 2023
Interview with Jacqui Felgate and Shane McInness, 3AW Breakfast
Subjects: Reported TikTok ban on federal devices
JACQUI FELGATE: Senator James Paterson is the Shadow Minister for Cyber Security, and TikTok will now be banned on all Australian and Victorian government devices after a damning security report review by the Department of Home Affairs into the Chinese-owned program. Senator, Dan Andrews is going to have to say goodbye to all of those followers now, I'd imagine?
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning. Well, sadly or happily, depending on your perspective, probably not. I suspect he'll just move it on to a private device, if it's not already, rather than having it on a government device. And that's a sensible thing because TikTok does represent a serious espionage threat, as has been demonstrated by their admission last year that they've spied on journalists by trying to discover their sources.
FELGATE: So, are you comfortable with politicians having TikTok on private devices? Do you think, given those security issues, that perhaps it's something that they should just not be out in the first place?
PATERSON: I don't have TikTok, and I urge all my colleagues to exercise real caution if they are on TikTok, because even if it's on a private device, you're only reducing the risk, you're not eliminating it. So, for example, taking it off a private device means the app couldn't compromise any of your other apps like your email or your work calendar, but it could still be used to track your physical location if you carry the device with you. And so, the safest thing to do for anyone, whether you're a politician or a private citizen and you're worried about it, is to get off the app entirely.
SHANE MCINNESS: Senator, if there is this concern about TikTok being on government phones, I can only imagine that there is at least some crossover between parliamentarians' personal device and their government-issued device. Surely at times, they accidentally send a text message from their private phone or whatever. Surely to mitigate the entire risk, as you were saying, no government employee should be allowed to use TikTok.
PATERSON: You're absolutely right. You cannot eliminate the risk if you're still on the app, even if you've just got it on a personal device. And everything that you communicate on that personal device is at risk because independent researchers have found that TikTok collects an extraordinary amount of data. For example, it persistently tries to get access to your contacts. It tries to map every other application installed on your phone. It even checks the Wi-Fi that you've logged into as well as the physical location. So really, the safest thing to do is to delete it, or never install it in the first place.
FELGATE: We're talking about politicians here, but what about companies that collect a lot of data, say insurance companies or we've seen so many hacks recently. What about people that work for those companies, even big banks? Would they be advising their staff now? Should there be further regulations?
PATERSON: Yeah, I think that's the next step. We have to both look at regulations which protect the millions of Australians who use the app, who are not government employees and absolutely look at people who work for important businesses that hold a lot of information or are systemically important to our country. Sometimes these are called critical infrastructure providers and they include banks and water and electricity utilities, port operators. Absolutely, they should be thinking very carefully about whether it's safe or not to have this on their device, because ultimately they're exposing any data that they hold to increased risk.
MCINNESS: Senator, what about for those who use it in general society? A lot of people will say, well, I don't care if China has my information, I don't talk about anything serious as it is. Do you think it should be banned wide scale or does people's usage of it outweigh the negative?
PATERSON: I think all options need to be on the table because in addition to this data security and privacy issue, there's also the danger of foreign interference. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company which is very close to the Chinese Communist Party and is subject to the intelligence laws of China. And that means they can be directed by the Chinese Communist Party. So, it would be trivially easy for them to suppress content which is counter to their narratives, to promote content which promotes their world view, or just to increase social division and undermine social cohesion in our country. And that's a serious risk to our democracy. So that's why in the United States, they're looking very carefully at banning it or as an alternative forcing TikTok to be sold by Bytedance and separating it from that Chinese ownership and control.
MCINNESS: We know that relations have been strained with China in recent years. The current government is trying to ease those relations. We saw Daniel Andrews in China last week, albeit without any media. Will this further strain ties with China by banning TikTok on government devices and I guess portraying them as the bad guy?
PATERSON: It certainly is a risk. In the past, when Australia's made decisions to protect our national security and our national interest by banning Huawei from the 5G network, the Chinese government has sought to punish us. But I don't think that's a good reason not to do it. We always have to put our national interests and our national security first. I hope the Albanese government finally does follow through and ban it today because I've been calling on them to take action on this for ten months now. And we are dangerously behind our allies. Every one of our Five Eyes intelligence partners has already taken action on this as has many other likeminded countries, and we are really lagging behind the field.
FELGATE: You're saying you want this done sooner rather than later. We've got a whole bunch of 20-year-old producers in here who love TikTok. How do you ask younger people who, you know, it's like asking someone of my generation, that they can't go on Instagram or Facebook.
PATERSON: Yeah, I completely understand that. It is a very viral popular app. But the good news is there are alternatives out there that have a pretty similar experience. And actually, research from the United States shows that support for banning the app outright achieves a majority support among Republicans, Independents and Democrats, and almost all age groups except the very youngest. So people are waking up to this national security threat all around the world. And I think that's not a reason not to take action on it.
FELGATE: Senator James Paterson, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security, thanks so much for your time this morning.
