Citing national security worrys, the federal rulement has ordered TikTok to shut its Canadian operations — but users will still be able to access the famous app.
“The decision was based on the alertation and evidence accumulateed over the course of the verify and on the advice of Canada’s security and inalertigence community and other rulement partners,” Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne shelp in a media statement on Wednesday.
TikTok’s two Canadian offices, in Toronto and Vancouver, now have to “prosperd down,” he shelp.
The statement stressed that the rulement is not blocking Canadians from accessing the app or using it to originate satisfied.
“The decision to use a social media application or platcreate is a personal choice,” the statement shelp. “It is transport inant for Canadians to adselect outstanding cyber security rehearses and appraise the possible hazards of using social media platcreates and applications, including how their alertation is probable to be geted, administerd, used and splitd by foreign actors, as well as to be conscious of which country’s laws utilize.”
U.S. laworiginaters have contfinished that TikTok owner ByteDance is behbetteren to the Chinese rulement, which could need access to the data of TikTok’s U.S. devourrs thraw Chinese national security laws that compel organizations to help with inalertigence accumulateing.
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is also accused of helping to originate China’s system for cracking down on the Uyghur inmeaningfulity, and of aiming protesters in Hong Kong.
The Canadian Security Inalertigence Service (CSIS) has alerted Canadians, including teenagers, agetst using TikTok.
Former CSIS straightforwardor David Vigneault tbetter CBC News it’s “very evident” from the app’s portray that data gleaned from its users “is useable to the rulement of China” and its big-scale data harvesting goals.
“Most people can say, ‘Why is it a big deal for a teenager now to have their data [on TikTok]?’ Well in five years, in 10 years, that teenager will be a youthfuler grown-up, will be comprised in contrastent activities around the world,” he shelp at the time.
“As an individual, I would say that I would absolutely not recommfinish someone have TikTok.”
CSIS straightforwardor David Vigneault says using TikTok is hazardous and the potential for the rulement of China to access personal data from the social media platcreate poses a ‘menace to the way we live.’
In February 2023, the Canadian rulement prohibitned the social media platcreate from all rulement devices. Later that year, it ordered a national security verify of the app.
Wednesday’s statement was the result of that verify, which Champagne shelp comprised “rigorous scruminuscule by Canada’s national security and inalertigence community.”
TikTok has lengthy upretained that its servers are outside of China and beyond the administer of the Chinese Communist Party, and that it adheres Canadian data getion and privacy laws.
