Australia Bans TikTok On Government Phones Joining US, UK, Canada And New Zealand

Forbes Innovation Consumer Tech Australia Bans TikTok On Government Phones Joining US, UK, Canada And New Zealand Matt Novak Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. FOIA reporter and founder of Paleofuture. com, writing news and opinion on every aspect of technology.

Following Apr 3, 2023, 10:36pm EDT | Press play to listen to this article! Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin File photo of Australia’s Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on March 30, 2023 in Canberra, Australia. . .

. [+] (Photo by Martin Ollman/Getty Images) Getty Images The government of Australia has banned the immensely popular social media app TikTok from all government-issued devices, according to an announcement by Australia’s Labor leadership. The country joins the other four countries in the so-called Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance—including the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the U.

S. —which already banned TikTok on government phones. Australia’s Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, released a statement on his website announcing the move early Tuesday, Australia-time.

“After receiving advice from intelligence and security agencies, today I authorized the Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department to issue a mandatory direction under the Protective Security Policy Framework to prohibit the TikTok app on devices issued by Commonwealth departments and agencies,” Dreyfus said in a press release. The Attorney General said any potential exemptions to the TikTok ban would “only be granted on a case-by-case basis” and that “appropriate security mitigations” would need to be implemented. The new rule will be enforced “as soon as practicable,” according to Dreyfus.

President Joe Biden banned TikTok on all U. S. government devices back in December 2022 and Canada banned TikTok from government phones in February .

Both the UK and New Zealand governments announced their respective bans a couple of weeks ago . MORE FOR YOU $100M Magic: Why Bruno Mars And Other Stars Are Ditching Their Managers Spring Begins And State Tax Rates Continue To Fall Today’s ‘Heardle’ Answer And Clues For Tuesday, April 4 Last year, TikTok was forced to concede that the data of Australians could theoretically be accessed by the Chinese government, according to a report from Australia’s ABC News , but the social media company claimed that it had never happened and never would happen. “We have never provided Australian user data to the Chinese government, we have never been asked for Australian user data by the Chinese government, and we would not provide it if we were asked,” TikTok told the ABC.

Many allies of the U. S. have expressed concern about the potential for the Chinese Communist Party to spy on their citizens with the TikTok app, a charge the company denies.

The U. S. government has floated the idea of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance spinning the entity off as a U.

S. -based corporation, which would presumably quell spying fears. But the company has been resistant to that idea, claiming it wouldn’t address any of the government’s concerns.

The FBI has been investigating TikTok’s alleged spying activity on journalists, including reporters at Forbes , while many politicians on Capitol Hill have called for TikTok to be completely banned in the U. S. But it’s not clear whether a ban on TikTok would be constitutional, with some libertarian-minded Republicans like Sen.

Rand Paul of Kentucky insisting it wouldn’t be right. It’s also not clear where such a ban would leave the many other Chinese-based apps currently available , like Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire, which is currently number one in the Apple app store. Follow me on Twitter .

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