August 3, 2023
OLIVER PETERSON: Federal Government is being urged to consider banning Chinese messaging at WeChat from all government devices. This is following on from a parliamentary inquiry where WeChat and TikTok did not play ball. The Shadow Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister and Chair of the committee, James Paterson. Good afternoon.
JAMES PATERSON: Great to be with you, Oly. Thanks for having me.
PETERSON: My pleasure. You haven't minced your words. Your committee here saying that TikTok and WeChat are the nation's biggest security threat?
PATERSON: That's right, Oly. I mean, the Director-General of ASIO, Mike Burgess, himself, has assessed that foreign interference and espionage are our number one security threat and cyber-enabled foreign interference and espionage is the fastest growing component of that threat. And unfortunately, companies like WeChat and TikTok are at the forefront of that because they are ultimately beholden to an authoritarian power, in this case, the Chinese Communist Party. And they can use that power to gather our data both individually and en masse. And they can use that power to pump disinformation into our political system, to divide us and weaken us. And there's a lot of evidence they're already doing it.
PETERSON: The inquiry that your committee undertook was having a look into the use of social media as a means of foreign interference here in Australia. Did these two particular companies not play ball with you?
PATERSON: One of them pretended to play ball, which was TikTok. They at least turned up and answered questions. But anybody who watched their testimony would have seen very clearly that they weren't sincerely participating in the exercise. They were just using that as an opportunity to try and use their corporate talking points to spin their way through the inquiry. Unfortunately, I don't think it went very well for them in any objective observer would have had less confidence in them after watching rather than more. In the case of WeChat, they didn't even bother to show up at all. They said because they don't have any Australian presence, they felt no need to turn up to the committee, even though they have hundreds of thousands of users in Australia and I think that highlights one of the real problems.
PETERSON: Their headquarters in China obviously. The Government banned the use of TikTok on government phones and devices. Shouldn't we be going a step further? Should everybody not use TikTok or WeChat, Senator?
PATERSON: Well, you say headquartered in China. Obviously, I agree with you, but believe it or not, TikTok themselves couldn't say during the inquiry where their headquarters was and even in writing a week later, still weren't able to identify the location of the headquarters. I mean, self-evidently the vast majority of their employees and all their senior management are based there, it is based there. And absolutely TikTok has already been banned from government devices. WeChat should be banned from government devices and it must remain at least as a last resort to be banned for all Australians in order to encourage them to comply with the very reasonable recommendations we put forward about platform transparency. Things like letting us know who has access to our data and what they do with it, how the algorithms are being manipulated, whether or not there are coordinated, inauthentic accounts on there, by bots. And those are the sort of things they have to front up and be honest about. And if they're unwilling to, well, first they would be fined and ultimately I think the Minister should have the power to ban them.
PETERSON: Just ban them from Australia altogether, they couldn't operate WeChat or TikTok here in Australia?
PATERSON: Yeah. If after a period of time that just demonstrated consistent non-compliance with the very reasonable transparency requirements we'd put in place, we really would be left in no other situation. I mean, if they thumb their nose at Australian law and the Australian government, then that option has to remain on the table. I hope that that option being on the table motivates good behaviour from them. But I have to say based on the current record of behaviour, I am sceptical.
PETERSON: Well that's the evidence. I mean, if they're not going to turn up or play ball at a parliamentary inquiry, if they want to operate here in Australia, Senator, they've got to
operate under the laws of the land. They've got to be held accountable for the interactions that go on their social media platforms.
PATERSON: Exactly right, Oly. And one of the recommendations that we made is that if you operate in Australia, you must have a presence in Australia, a legal presence, a physical presence, a personnel presence in Australia, so that you can be subject to the powers of the Senate to compel a witness to appear. So that you can be available to regulators and law enforcement and others who want to examine what your application is doing to our country. And if you refuse to provide that kind of transparency, well then, I think there's got to be serious consequences.
PETERSON: Because ultimately, they could be causing some sort of cybersecurity threat to all Australians. Is that the major concern in the findings of your committee's report?
PATERSON: That's exactly what the committee found when it comes to your personal data security and privacy. And we also found that these platforms are very permissive environments for foreign state disinformation and that, for example, on TikTok, independent researchers found that 95 per cent of the content about the Xinjiang region in China, where Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found crimes against humanity and possible genocide is taking place. 95% of that content on TikTok is positive. It says that Xinjiang is a wonderful place. There's nothing wrong there. Now, that couldn't happen naturally, and I don't think it could happen without the willing participation of the company.
PETERSON: In the process were other social media companies willing to engage with your community, Senator?
PATERSON: I give credit, at least to the Western social media platforms like Twitter, like Facebook, like Meta, YouTube. They at least turned up, they at least answered questions. Now, none of them got a clean bill of health, they've all got evidence of authoritarian foreign governments being active on their platforms. But they are trying to fight that. They are trying to identify it, they are trying to reduce it. We think they could do more, but at least they showed up.
PETERSON: So, your advice to Australians and those listening to us this afternoon, Senator, who might have an account, say with Instagram or Facebook, they might use a whole host of these different social media applications. What do we do? Continue to use them or just be a little wary about where that information is going and what, you know, particular state actors might be doing with it?
PATERSON: Number one, think very carefully about the sorts of platforms you're on. You don't have to be on TikTok, you don't have to be on WeChat, and if you're not you reduce the risk to yourself. Number two, if you decide to be on these platforms, no matter where they're headquartered, be careful about the content about yourself that you put on there. And finally, be sceptical about the content that you see on there. It may in fact be disinformation
deliberately placed into our political system by a foreign authoritarian government that wants to weaken us, that wants to destabilise us, that wants to divide us. And particularly in the context of the upcoming referendum on the Voice, there's already evidence on Twitter of Chinese state-affiliated entities trying to pump up division in relation to that because they know that issues around race and the Constitution are highly sensitive in Western countries like Australia and they know it's an opportunity to weaken, so we can't let them get away with it.
PETERSON: Senator Paterson, appreciate your time. Have a good afternoon.
PATERSON: Thank you.
ENDS
