The country’s peak cyber security agency says TikTok’s ability to gather large amounts of user information was in part the reason for the app’s ban from government devices.
Officials from the Australian Signals Directorate have told a parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference through social media the app could form a picture of information about those with profiles on the platform.
The government moved to ban TikTok from government devices earlier this year, following the lead of other Western nations.
Australian Signals Directorate acting director-general Abigail Bradshaw said the information that could be gathered by TikTok included data such as phone numbers, contacts, IP addresses and SIM card numbers.
“Together, obviously, in aggregated form that creates quite a unique fingerprint in terms of the device,” she said.
“That analysis of the risks associated with the type of data which can be generated … informed the architecture of the advisory (for the TikTok ban).”
Officials for TikTok, who appeared before the committee on Tuesday, said security for users was its priority.
Department of Home Affairs official Peter Anstee, who also appeared in front of the committee, said while TikTok had been banned from government devices, data collection was common among social media platforms.
“There are a lot of applications that can collect a huge amount of data,” he said.
“I don’t think that risk is unique to any particular app.”
Anstee also revealed a review into privacy practices of social media platforms, which was presented to the government earlier this year, was unlikely to be released publicly.
“Given the classification of the review, I think it’s unlikely that it will be made public,” he told the hearing.
The review is still being considered by the government.
Meanwhile, the Australian Electoral Commission is ramping up its monitoring of social media platforms in the lead-up to the Voice referendum.
AEC commissioner Tom Rogers told the committee high-profile sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram will be watched closely by the AEC to identify examples of misinformation and correct misconceptions.
The committee heard witness evidence to better understand how foreign governments and bad actors could use social media to interfere in Australia’s domestic affairs.
Rogers said that the monitoring of public posts on social media does not involve actively monitoring the Chinese-language platform WeChat, despite the AEC using the platform in the past for advertising.
“We’ve done some advertising, I think, in the 2022 election in a couple of specific areas,” Rogers said. “One is about mis- and disinformation about our ‘stop and consider’ campaign that has been running on a number of platforms.”
Another area in which the AEC has advertised on WeChat has been the issue of voting informality. Rogers said WeChat was targeted for advertising in part because informal voting tends to take place more in electorates where English is spoken as a second language.
“They’re the main reasons we’ve advertised on WeChat previously,” he said. “We intend to do that again fairly shortly but again in the same sorts of areas: formality [of voting] and mis- and disinformation.”
Committee chair James Paterson asked the AEC representatives why the commission chose to be on specific platforms such as Twitter, for example, and not TikTok.
Rogers said the AEC’s use of Twitter related to its access to the large number of users frequenting the site. It advertises on WeChat to access a particular language or cultural group.
“One of the key reasons we are not on TikTok now, senator, is that we are conscious of the broad public debate about TikTok,” Rogers said.
Another reason cited by the AEC for not being on TikTok is the absence of public sector agencies more broadly on the platform and that the TikTok audience is largely below voting age.
Rogers also expressed concern for the safety of officials conducting elections following misinformation being spread online.
He told the committee there was a growing number of incidents where officials were being filmed at polling places and their names posted online.
Rogers said the recent NSW election was the first time he had seen a widespread campaign of filming electoral staff.
While the AEC did not run the NSW election, which was run by the NSW Electoral Commission, Rogers said it represented a concerning trend for future polls.
“There’s also a personal safety element for the staff involved in that process, which disturbs us,” he said.
“The big picture strategic impact is undermining citizens’ faith in the integrity of the electoral process, and from my perspective, I think that is critically important.”
Rogers said conspiracy theories peddled online about the electoral process were damaging to the voting system.
“If citizens start to promote conspiracy theories about a faulty electoral system or somehow that the electoral system is biased, or whatever it might be, that will undermine confidence in electoral results,” he said.
The committee is set to hand down its final report by the end of the month.
READ MORE:
Any feedback or news tips? Here’s where to contact the relevant team.