Canada has implemented a broad ban, similar to the ones already in place by the US and EU, that prevents TikTok from being installed on all government-issued mobile devices. This action by western officials is due to concerns over the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not ruled out further measures, stating that he believes many Canadians, including individuals in the private sector, will consider the security of their data and make their own decisions. He expressed a desire to provide Canadians with the necessary information to make informed choices.
Last week, the executive branch of the EU announced a temporary ban on TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure. Following suit, the European parliament banned staff from installing the app on any phone with access to email or parliamentary networks. Similarly, in the US, TikTok has been banned from official government devices by over half of the states and Congress. On Monday, the White House extended the ban to all government agencies, with federal employees given 30 days to remove the app from their work devices.
Although TikTok is hugely popular among young people, its Chinese ownership has sparked concerns that Beijing may be gathering data on western users or propagating pro-China narratives and misinformation. The app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that relocated its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.
Amidst fears that the app could be utilized to promote pro-Beijing views or collect user data, TikTok is now facing escalating scrutiny from Europe and the US regarding security and data privacy. This scrutiny comes amid a broader technological power struggle between China and the West, spanning from spy balloons to computer chips.
The company has been involved in some damaging controversies, including its admission in December that it used its app to conduct surveillance on a group of US journalists as part of a leak investigation. At least four employees were terminated as a result. Moreover, it has been revealed multiple times that TikTok is not as separate from its Chinese ownership as it previously claimed, with moderation guidelines that favored Beijing’s foreign policy (which have since been revised) and ongoing connections between the code base of TikTok and its Chinese counterpart app, Douyin.
However, despite investigations taking place across various continents, no conclusive evidence has been found to suggest that TikTok’s data collection practices go beyond the same “surveillance capitalism” that competitors such as Facebook and Instagram employ to advertise to targeted audiences. Instead, TikTok has been asked to defend itself against allegations of what it may do if it were coerced by the Chinese government.
Mona Fortier, the Canadian treasury board president, announced that the Canadian federal government would ban the use of TikTok on official devices in the future, citing an “unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.” Fortier explained that the chief information officer of Canada had determined that the app’s data collection methods granted significant access to the phone’s content. However, she also noted that the government had no evidence of compromised government information.
In response, a TikTok spokesperson expressed surprise that the Canadian government had not cited any specific security concerns or reached out to the company for clarification before implementing the ban. The spokesperson emphasized that TikTok was always available to discuss privacy and security issues and that the ban prevented officials from communicating with Canadians on a platform that millions of people loved.
