New Zealand will ban TikTok on all devices with access to its parliament by the end of this month, becoming the latest country to impose an official bar on the popular social media platform owned by a Beijing-based tech conglomerate. New Zealand is now the latest country to ban the popular video-sharing app from government-related phones to protect sensitive information.
A ban on entertainment
New Zealand banned the short-video sharing app TikTok from devices with access to the country’s parliamentary network, citing cybersecurity concerns. The island nation is the latest among several Western countries to ban the app from lawmakers’ phones.
The country’s MPs were informed by parliamentary service on Friday that the Chinese-owned video-sharing app would be blocked from all parliamentary devices at the end of the month, and were told via email that “the Service has determined that the risks are not acceptable in the current New Zealand parliament environment”.
“The decision to block the TikTok application has been made based on our own analysis and following discussion with our colleagues across government and internationally,” the email reads.
New Zealand’s decision follows similar rulings by some of its major western allies. Earlier in the week, the UK government announced that TikTok would be banned, effective immediately, from ministers’ and civil servants’ mobile phones. The US, Canada, and the European Commission already had a ban in place.
The ban will come into effect on March 31.
Tiktok vs. Security
Parliamentary Service Chief Executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said the risks related to the app were “not acceptable” in the current environment.
“This decision has been made based on our own experts’ analysis and following discussion with our colleagues across government and internationally,” he said.
TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has already been banned on government-issued devices in Canada, Australia, Britain and the US because of concerns that ByteDance shares sensitive user data with the Chinese government. The UK banned it on government-related device less than 24 hours ago. The European Commission has also instructed employees to remove TikTok from their phones. US President Joe Biden has even threatened a complete ban of the app unless it separates from its parent company.
Global action against the popular video-sharing app started in India in 2020 when the government banned TikTok as well as over 100 other apps for the entire nation following clashes with China at the border. New Delhi maintained that the ban was to protect the nation’s sovereignty and in the interest of national security. Soon after, then-US President Donald Trump called the app out for spying on behalf of the Chinese government.
Tiktoks hidden loyalties
While TikTok has admitted that its employees in China can access details of foreign accounts, it has denied ever turning over data to the government. It blames fundamental misconceptions and wider geopolitics for the regulators banning the app, stressing the $1.5 billion it has spent on security efforts.
Gonzalez said special arrangements will be made for lawmakers who need the app to perform their duties and that the platform can still be accessed via browsers.
In recent months, however, as relationships with Beijing have been strained by the shooting down of Chinese surveillance balloons, a number of western countries have introduced bans on the app on parliamentary devices – with the US going a step further, to consider an outright ban on the app. In early March, the White House said it supported legislation that would allow the administration to ban TikTok and other foreign-based technologies completely if they pose national security threats.
The New Zealand ban does not specifically cover MPs’ personal phones, but those phones must have the app uninstalled in order to access any parliament applications.
A number of New Zealand MPs use TikTok to post political videos and commentary. Among the most prolific are Te Pāti Māori leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, and Act party leader David Seymour. The Māori party had not responded to requests for comment by time of publication. A spokesperson for Act said the party’s TikTok account “is run from a personal phone free of parliamentary information. We have been taking this precaution for some time.”
