March 15, 2024
Security experts and the Coalition are urging Labor to follow Washington's lead and force Chineseowned platform TikTok to sell or face a ban, as Anthony Albanese declares he has "no plans" to crack down on the app.
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson led calls for Australia to take action on the video platform, after the US House of Representatives passed legislation demanding TikTok's owner, ByteDance, sell within six months or be banned.
Senator Paterson said the government can't afford to be "left behind" in confronting the significant national security risk posed by the app, including stealing data and foreign interference, arguing that it should introduce similar legislation to that in the US.
"We need the Albanese government to introduce similar legislation to protect Australia," he said. "Because if the US solves this problem for themselves but we're not included in that, Australians will continue to be exposed to the foreign interference and privacy risks of Chinese government-controlled TikTok." The calls come as Meta, the owner of Facebook, continues on a crash course with the government over its axing of support to news outlets, doubling down on its decision and arguing tech giants can't "solve the long-term challenges" facing journalism.
Speaking on Thursday ahead of a visit from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi next week and the impending repeal of crippling tariffs on the nation's wine exports worth $1.2bn, the Prime Minister ruled out that he was planning a similar move. "We have made decisions based upon our own security assessments," he said, adding: "We're independent; we don't follow other countries." Former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department Peter Jennings said TikTok was a known vehicle for "intelligence gathering and influencing techniques", cautioning that forcing the app out of Chinese ownership was not enough and calling for a total ban.
"I'm less convinced changing ownership is going to work because really the key here is the algorithms which run the channel, which are designed by China and presumably will continue to be shaped and manipulated by China," he said.
"So I don't know that a change of ownership necessarily solves that problem, and so my approach would be to simply say that this is inconsistent with how democracies should function and it's not something we should support." Mr Jennings said TikTok was "shaping public debate" on Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza, with the app favouring content that was "unrelentingly pro-Palestinian" in a bid to turn young people against the US and its allies.
"The Chinese Communist Party has decades of experience in this type of propaganda manipulation internally with regard to its own population," he said.
Strategic Analysis Australia director Michael Shoebridge said TikTok posed a security threat and it was well known to have used data to track journalists in the US, disputing claims by the Chinese company that it had changed its processing.
"I think getting TikTok out of Chinese ownership and making its algorithm transparent to users and regulators is the way to sensibly deal with the national security problem," he said.
"Having an opaque algorithm run by a Chinese-owned company that is obliged to co-operate with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese intelligence agencies is unacceptable." CyberCX director of cyber intelligence Katherine Mansted said the issue of data security on social media went "straight to the heart of our democracy".
"It's rare these days for both sides of US politics to agree on much at all, so the fact that they have agreed on this is telling," she said.
