Canada’s electronic spy agency watching TikTok ‘very carefully,’ Trudeau says | 24CA News
Canada’s digital spy company is watching out for safety threats from the well-liked Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned Thursday.
Responding to questions from reporters in a pre-cabinet scrum on Parliament Hill, Trudeau mentioned the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s overseas alerts intelligence company, is maintaining a tally of TikTok as Republican lawmakers transfer to ban the app within the U.S.
“I think people are concerned about TikTok. I think people are obviously watching very carefully,” he mentioned. “The … CSE is one of the best cyber security agencies in the world and they’re watching very carefully.”
WATCH | CSE watching social media ‘rigorously’ for overseas threats, Trudeau says
As U.S. lawmakers voice nationwide safety considerations over TikTok, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government continues to observe social media channels to guard Canadians.
U.S. strikes to ban TikTok
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday introduced bipartisan laws to ban the app, which reaches a couple of billion customers worldwide.
The laws responds to rising considerations within the U.S. that TikTok proprietor ByteDance Ltd. might use the app to spy on or censure Americans.
Rubio’s invoice would block all transactions from any social media firm in, or underneath the affect of, China and Russia, the senator’s workplace mentioned in a news launch.
The invoice could be an growth of present American legal guidelines limiting entry to TikTok. The U.S. Senate unanimously permitted a invoice in August 2020 banning federal staff from utilizing the app on government-issued gadgets.
ByteDance didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
NDP ethics critic Matthew Green mentioned in an e-mail to CBC the occasion believes Canada has fallen behind its European counterparts on knowledge safety. He didn’t name for a ban on TikTok for federal staff’ gadgets.
“While New Democrats don’t think a ban on TikTok should be dismissed outright, the government needs to take the first steps to introduce better regulation and work side by side with our allies on data protection,” Green mentioned.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has practically 900 thousand followers on TikTok and routinely makes use of the platform.
Trudeau additionally responded to a query concerning the danger of Chinese infiltration of Canadian authorities accounts on Twitter.
He mentioned the federal government is “watching what the Americans are doing” concerning the U.S.-based social media large, which has been underneath intense scrutiny since billionaire Elon Musk accomplished his buy of the corporate in October.
