Australia bans TikTok from federal government devices

By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — 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 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 is owned by the Chinese technology company Bytedance and has long maintained that it does not share data with the Chinese government. TikTok objected to the decision, saying it was “driven by politics, not by fact.”