Parliamentary Committee Notes: Security Concerns with TikTok Social Media Application
PROC – Foreign Interference
Date: March 20, 2023
Classification: unclassified
Fully releasable (ATIP)? Yes (except name)
Branch / Agency: NCSB/NCSD
Proposed Response:
- The Government takes the security and privacy of Canadians' data seriously.
- Our government continues to work in close collaboration with partners and leaders in the technology sector to ensure Canadians and our systems are protected.
- CSE, and its Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), defends the Government of Canada's networks from threats; provides cyber security advice and guidance to other levels of government and critical infrastructure; and offers simple but effective tips that all Canadians can use to keep themselves safer online.
- Canada remains a target for malicious cyber activity, including cyber-enabled espionage and foreign interference.
- Cyber actors conduct these malicious activities to advance their political, economic, military, security, and ideological interests, by manipulating users and exploiting security vulnerabilities.
- It is therefore important for Canadians to adopt good cyber security practices, including assessing possible risks of using social media platforms and apps.
- The Government is closely monitoring developments in the U.S. regarding TikTok and will not hesitate to take action to protect Canadian interests.
- Following the announcement by my colleague, the President of the Treasury Board, effective February 28, TikTok has been removed from government-issued devices and the application will be blocked from downloading in the future. This follows the determination by the Chief Information Officer of Canada that the application poses an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.
Background:
TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based Internet technology company founded in 2012. It is used to create short music, lip-sync, dance, comedy and talent videos of 3 to 15 seconds, and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide, including the United States, after merging with Musical.ly on August 2, 2018.
Very popular with younger users, the app has been downloaded over a billion times and is available in over 140 markets and 75 languages, including in Canada. The Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University reported in September 2022 that 26% of online Canadians have a TikTok account, with adoption skewing towards younger age groups, as 76% of those aged 18-24 have an account on the platform. TikTok had the largest increase in the number of Canadian users relative to the Social Media Lab's data from 2020 (11% increase).
The app uses artificial intelligence to analyze users' interests and preferences through their interactions with the content, and display a personalized content feed for each user. Similar to other consumer algorithms such as those used by YouTube and Netflix, which provide users with a list of recommended videos, TikTok interprets the user's individual preferences and provides content that they may enjoy.
CSIS' 2021 Public Report noted that advanced cyber tools developed and sold by commercial firms are giving new collection capabilities to countries and foreign state actors that historically have not posed a significant threat in the cyber domain. The services offered by these companies can have both defensive and offensive applications. These tools enable a growing list of actors to conduct espionage, sabotage, endanger civilians, undermine democratic values and exert foreign influence. Open-source reporting suggests that multiple authoritarian regimes have used such tools to target lawyers, journalists, politicians, and human rights defenders.
Over the past few years, many media outlets have reported on data privacy and security concerns related to the application. In January 2023, Sami Khoury, head of CSE's Cyber Centre, spoke to CBC News about the potential risks Canadians face when downloading TikTok and other applications. In December 2022, U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray raised national security concerns with TikTok, saying that the FBI was concerned that the Chinese had the ability to control the app's recommendation algorithm, "which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations." He also asserted that China could use the app to collect data on its users that could be used for traditional espionage operations.
On December 28, 2022, President Biden signed into law an omnibus spending bill that includes a ban, for national security reasons, on the use of TikTok applying to all federal government devices. This move follows bans already put in place by the U.S. military and several state governments. In addition, bi-partisan legislation to ban TikTok from operating in the United States altogether was introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in December 2022.
On February 27, 2022, the Government of Canada announced its decision to remove TikTok from government-issued mobile devices and block the downloading of the application in the future. This follows a determination by Canada's Chief Information Officer that the application poses an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.
Contacts:
Prepared by: [REDACTED], NCSB/NCSD, [REDACTED] (name and number not releasable)
Approved by: Sébastien Aubertin-Guigère, Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, National and Cyber Security Branch, 613-614-4715
- Date modified: