Australia announced on Tuesday that it will ban government officials from using the Chinese app TikTok on their work devices, joining a number of Western countries that have made similar decisions for security reasons.
The decision was made on the advice of Australian intelligence and will be implemented “as quickly as possible”, Australian Justice Minister Mark Dreyfus said.
Australia is the latest country from the so-called “Five Eyes” alliance to ban TikTok in government, after the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.
Similar measures have been taken in France, the Netherlands and the European Commission.
At the center of the concerns is a 2017 Chinese law that requires local companies to hand over supposedly security-related personal data at the request of authorities.
TikTok initially said the bans were “rooted in xenophobia”, before admitting last December that it collected personal data to spy on journalists.
The popularity of the video-sharing app has skyrocketed in recent years, particularly among young people. Many Australian government departments had previously sought to expand their presence on the app to reach a younger audience.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, which has a similar but separate app for China.
Earlier this year, the Australian government also announced it would remove Chinese-made CCTV surveillance cameras from politicians’ offices, also for security reasons.
Source: TSF
