October 24, 2022
Shadow cybersecurity Minister James Paterson has called on the Albanese government to strengthen legislative protections for millions of social media users after reports emerged that TikTok’s Chinese parent company planned to track American users’ location without their knowledge or consent.
On Friday the US-based publication Forbes revealed that a monitoring project based in China and headed by executives at ByteDance, which owns TikTok, had a “plan … for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from US users’ devices.”
According to Forbes, the data collection effort went beyond attempting to target ads or prevent fraud but “to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens”.
When contacted by Forbes the company “did not answer questions about whether it has specifically targeted any members of the US government, activists, public figures, or journalists,” raising concerns that the app could be used to track the activities of those who have spoken out or reported on human rights or other abuses by the government in Beijing.
TikTok has an audience of over 7 million people in Australia and at least 30 per cent of the app’s users are thought to be under the age of 15.
Saying that the reports were “very serious”, Mr Paterson told Mr Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil that “given China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, ByteDance employees may be compelled to share Australians’ sensitive information with Chinese intelligence and security agencies.”
“We have also learned from reputable cybersecurity experts including internet 2.0 that TikTok engages in worrying data harvesting practices that monitor device location hourly.”
Mr Paterson said that he had previously written to Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil about TikTok but that he had not yet received a reply.
A spokesman for Ms O’Neil declined to comment on the specifics of the Forbes report but pointed to her request in September for a review by Home Affairs on how to protect Australians from questionable data collection practices.
The results of that review are expected sometime in the coming year.
In February, the Digital 2022 Australia report found that it was the third most downloaded mobile app over the previous year, behind Service Victoria and Service NSW.
TikTok’s data collection practices have been a subject of concern both in the US and Australia for years.
Since 2021 the company has been working on a plan called “Project Texas” to keep American user data secure from ByteDance workers and executives in Beijing and satisfy the concerns of American lawmakers, though no such project is thought to exist in Australia.
A spokesperson for TikTok said that “safety and privacy is our top priority”, and denied the claims made by Forbes saying, “the TikTok app does not collect precise GPS location information from US users, meaning TikTok could not monitor US users in the way suggested.”
“TikTok has never been used to “target” any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users.”
