March 6, 2023
TONY JONES: I do want to move over to James Paterson who is a Liberal Senator and also the Shadow Minister for Cyber Security and Countering Foreign Interference, which is where his concerns come into play, I guess, about TikTok. I'll let him explain why. He joins us on the line now. Good morning, James.
PATERSON: Good morning, Tony. Thanks for having me.
JONES: So, thanks for coming on. Is that a fair assumption? I mean, do you regard this as a potential threat to our national security?
PATERSON: There's no question TikTok is a serious national security threat. TikTok is a company which is very close to the Chinese Communist Party. And like all companies ultimately headquartered in China, is subject to China's national security laws, including its 2017 National Intelligence law, which says that all Chinese citizens and Chinese organisations and companies must secretly corporate Chinese intelligence services if they are requested to do so. Now, given those risks, many of our close allies and friends like the United States, the European Union, Canada,
Denmark and others have now banned TikTok from all government devices. And in July last year I wrote to TikTok to ask them whether Australian user data was accessible in China, and they admitted it was. So, I shared that correspondence with the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security and encouraged her to act. Eight months on, the government has taken no action to protect Australians.
JONES: Okay, so if TikTok is essentially a fun platform where people, you know, as I say, post videos of themselves dancing and there's obviously a lot more to it than that but that's my narrow view of it. Why are government departments using it anyway? Why are they even on TikTok?
PATERSON: Some government departments are on there because they use it for engagement with the public. So, for example, Tourism Australia allows their employees to use it because they use it to promote Australia and tourism and maybe there should be some exempt exceptions to make government wide them. But a lot of other government agencies appear to have no reason why they do or do not have it. And I've just launched an audit of all Commonwealth departments and agencies and found that 25 government departments banned it outright. Twelve of them partially ban it, for example, they don't allow it on [laptops], but they do allow it on [phones]. Eleven permit it and five agencies provided no answer at all.
JONES: But has there been any evidence so far and you may have already addressed this, I'm sorry, but is there any evidence so far that the Chinese have infiltrated government departments and their TikTok accounts?
PATERSON: I'll give you a very powerful example that happened late last year. There's a journalist, Emily Baker-White, who had written a number of critical articles for Forbes on TikTok, and late last year she alleged that TikTok had been personally surveilling her, using the application on her phone. When she made those allegations TikTok denied it. They said not only were they not doing it, but it wasn't even technically possible for them to do it. But in December, they had to admit that in fact that was wrong, that they had been surveilling her and they had to fire two employees in the United States and two employees in China.
JONES: Yeah but hang on, she's not with the government, though. She's not a public servant.
PATERSON: No. But, Tony, if they can do it for a journalist who is writing critical articles, why wouldn't they do it for public servant...
JONES: So, at the moment, there's no firm evidence that any government department TikTok account has been hacked?
PATERSON: No, I don't have any evidence of that. But I think it's very easy to assume that if they're willing to do it for journalists and lie about it to the public, then there's no reason why they wouldn't be equally willing to do it with government agencies and departments and their employees as well, many of whom have access to sensitive information.
JONES: You're not just a wowser, are you?
PATERSON: No, I don't think so. I'm on other social media channels. I'm on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, but I'm not on TikTok.
JONES: So what's to say, Senator, that they can't be hacked? I mean, people listening at the moment will know that their Facebook accounts have been hacked and Instagram and what have you. And how do we know that yours can't be hacked through some other foreign agency? I mean, everything's susceptible, I would have thought.
PATERSON: Tony you're partly right. Social media applications involve some risk and all social media applications collect information on us. The difference is that Facebook and Instagram collect information on us because they want to sell us holidays or golf clubs. TikTok and other social media applications collect that same information, and it could fall into the hands directly of the Chinese Communist Party because they are beholden to it. Facebook and Twitter are not. They're based in the United States, they're exempt from those kind of obligations.
JONES: Right, okay. Hey, just before I let you go, a question without notice, a little cheeky one. Do you reckon Josh Frydenberg is going to be sitting alongside you again after the next election?
PATERSON: Well, it's certainly been a messy couple of weeks for the incumbent member for Kooyong, the alleged Independent Monique Ryan. And, really, I think her progressive credentials that she ran on at the last election are being questioned and not by the Liberal Party but by her closest friends and supporters and people who've worked very intimately with her. I won't comment on the outcome of that court case, which is ongoing, but I know a lot of people in Kooyong are thinking have we got what we voted for in Monique Ryan.
JONES: Would you like to see Josh back in there?
PATERSON: Josh has got an enormous contribution to make. He'll have to make a decision about whether he wants to run again, and the Liberal Party will have to go through a democratic preselection process. But certainly, if he would like to put his hand up, I'd welcome that. We would love to have him back in Canberra.
JONES: Good to talk to you, James, and we'll certainly keep tabs on you pushing to have TikTok eradicated from all the government departments because if in fact there is the risk of it being infiltrated, then there's obviously merit to the call. So good on you, thanks for your time this morning.
PATERSON: Thanks Tony.
ENDS
