TORONTO (AP) — Canada announced Monday that it is banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices, reflecting mounting concerns from Western officials over the Chinese video-sharing app.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it could be a first step towards further action, or it could be.
“I suspect that if the government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones, I suspect many Canadians, from businesses to individuals, will be thinking and perhaps making decisions about the security of their own data.” said Trudeau.
“I’m always a fan of giving Canadians the information so they can make the right decisions for them,” he added.
The European Union executive said last week it had temporarily banned TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure.
The EU’s action follows similar moves in the US, where more than half the states and Congress have banned TikTok from official government devices.
Last week, Canada’s federal privacy agency and its counterparts in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec announced an investigation to determine whether the app complies with Canadian privacy laws.
TikTok is hugely popular among young people, but its Chinese ownership has raised fears that Beijing could use it to collect data on Western users or spread pro-Chinese narratives and misinformation. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020
TikTok is coming under increasing scrutiny from Europe and America for security and privacy amid concerns that the app could be used to promote pro-Beijing views or collect user information. It comes as China and the West are locked in a broader tug-of-war over technologies ranging from spy balloons to computer chips.
Treasury Canada President Mona Fortier said the federal government will also prevent the app from being downloaded to official devices in the future.
Fortier said in a statement Canada’s chief information officer determined that this “poses an unacceptable risk to privacy and security.”
The app will be removed from Canadian government-issued phones on Tuesday.
“On a mobile device, TikTok’s data collection methods provide significant access to the phone’s content,” Fortier said.
“While the risks of using this application are clear, at this time we have no evidence that government information has been compromised.”
Recent media reports have also raised concerns about possible Chinese interference in the recent Canadian election, prompting opposition parties to call for a public inquiry into alleged foreign electoral interference.
“It is curious that the Canadian government moved to blocking TikTok on government-issued devices – without naming any specific security concerns or contacting us with questions – only after similar bans were introduced in the EU and US,” a TikTok spokesman said in an email.
The company is always available to discuss the privacy and security of Canadians, the statement said. “Singing out TikTok in this way does nothing to help achieve this common goal,” the email reads. “It just prevents officials from reaching the public on a platform loved by millions of Canadians.”