TikTok faces foreign interference through social media probe

Video-sharing app TikTok Australia says there is “misinformation” around its connection to China.

Chinese-founded app TikTok says it would “never” share Australian users’ data with the Chinese Government.

But Australian officials say the platform could be forced to hand over the information through the US Government, which stores some Australian information.

Key management from the video-sharing app on Friday fronted a Senate committee investigation on foreign interference through social media.

“We would never give Australian user data directly to the Chinese Government,” TikTok Australia general manager Lee Hunter said.

“We never have and we never would.”

Personal data collected from Australian users is stored on servers located in the US and Singapore, where Mr Hunter said the platform had “strict controls” around security and data access.

However, it did confirm that the US Department of Justice could hand over Australian data to the Chinese Government if the request was found to be “valid” following an allegation of a criminal offence.

TikTok Australia general manager Lee Hunter with public policy director Brent Thomas at the hearing in Canberra. ‘TikTok is not China,’ Mr Hunter told the inquiry. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Mr Hunter defended the company, saying it did not want to be a “political football” and would increase transparency and accountability to give “peace of mind”.

“We are not based in China, we do not moderate or remove content at the request of the Chinese Government,” he said.

“We want to be judged based on the facts, and conflation of TikTok and the Chinese Government isn’t accurate.”

When asked if the platform would notify Australian authorities if it found evidence of foreign interference, Mr Hunter said: “I think we would.”

However, officials were unclear on exactly which department it would report evidence to.

Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young also grilled them over a viral suicide video that circulated on the platform this month.

“If your system has been so undermined and infiltrated by bots and ‘bad actors’, I find this whole rest of the conversation about how we should be trusting you’ve got it under control in terms of political influence pretty unbelievable,” she said.

“You can’t even protect kids from seeing suicide videos, how on earth are you going to protect the Australian voters from political interference?”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said there was no reason to restrict the application ‘at this point’ but encouraged Australians to exercise their own judgment before using social media platforms. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Joel Carrett

Federal politicians in July raised national security concerns, prompting calls for the app to be banned.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last month said intelligence agencies had found no evidence that TikTok had misused any of its Australian users’ data.

“There’s nothing at this point that would suggest to us that security interests have been compromised or Australian citizens have been compromised,” he said.

TikTok Australia spokesman Brent Thomas revealed the Government did not engage with the company while it conducted its security review, and it was only made aware of the outcome from the public statement.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) this month warned that the growth of TikTok had put the Chinese Communist Party in a position from which it could “shape the information environment” on a largely non-Chinese-speaking platform.

ASPI director Peter Jennings said the 2017 national security laws meant citizens and businesses must help Chinese intelligence agencies gather data if asked. and they must deny involvement if asked about it.

TikTok was launched in Australia in May 2019 and is offered in all major markets except Hong Kong and China – where its owner ByteDance offers another video app called Douyin.