March 17, 2024
The shadow home affairs spokesperson has labelled TikTok a “bad faith actor” and a “serious threat” to Australia’s national security, urging the Albanese government to follow the United States in its crackdown on the video-sharing app.
The Liberal senator James Paterson said he was not advocating for a total ban on the popular app but wants Australia to emulate the United States in its bid to force the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok to divest its business in the US.
Paterson told ABC’s Insiders on Sunday he hoped changes to the app’s ownership structure would lower the risk of Australian data being harvested by the Chinese government and prevent its influence in spreading disinformation.
He added Chinese instant messaging app WeChat should be treated in the same manner.
“I’m not advocating a ban for TikTok and to WeChat. What I’m advocating is removing the Chinese Communist party control over all of these apps,” he said.
“The end that I hope for is that Australians can continue to use TikTok but just without the risk that their data is abused, and without the risk that the Chinese Communist party can put its thumb on the algorithm to pump disinformation into our democracy.”
TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is owned and headquartered in China, has repeatedly denied claims the Chinese government has any influence over the app. The app’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, says US data is held in Singapore, not China.
Citing knowledge of classified intelligence and referring to open-source information, Paterson insisted the app is a “bad faith actor”.
“It is a risk to our national security. The government should take action to protect Australians from this serious threat,” Paterson said.
“If it’s not safe to be on the phone of a bureaucrat, why should 8 million Australians have it on their devices without any protection at all?”
TikTok admitted in December 2022 to using its own app to spy on reporters and determine their confidential sources after a series of damning reports about the company were published.
Despite his security concerns, Paterson defended the Liberal party’s right to have an official account on the social media platform and said it was OK for political parties to use it as long as they were “mitigating risks”.
TikTok is one of the fastest-growing platforms in the world, with more than 170 million users in the US and 8.5 million Australian users.
Last week the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would give ByteDance six months to divest from the app and sell to a company that is not based in China.
A failure to divest in time would effectively result in a ban on the app across the US.
TikTok is banned on Australian government devices at the moment but the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said he has no plans to follow the US down the forced divestment path.
“I think you’ve got to be pretty cautious. You’ve always got to have national security concerns front and centre, but you also need to acknowledge that for a whole lot of people, this provides a way of them communicating. And so we haven’t got advice at this stage to do that,” Albanese told WSFM last week.
“We don’t use TikTok on government phones and that is an appropriate measure that we’ve put in place.”
– Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
