Aus bans TikTok from Federal Govt devices

Australia has become the last of the “Five Eyes” security partners to ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from its federal government’s devices.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said in a statement on Tuesday that based on intelligence and security agencies’ advice, that ban would come into effect “as soon as practicable”. The so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partners — the United States, Canada, Britain and New Zealand — have taken similar steps.

TikTok objected to the decision. “We are extremely disappointed by this decision, which, in our view, is driven by politics, not by fact,” the company’s general manager for Australia, Lee Hunter, said in a statement.