Territories join Ottawa, most provinces in banning TikTok on government devices

Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are thelatest jurisdictions in Canada to announce they are banning TikTok on government-issued devices pending a federal threat assessment.

The N.W.T. says its ban took effect Friday, following the lead ofthe federal government and several provinces.

Nunavut says access to the video-sharing platform was blocked onall of its networks as of Tuesday.

Ottawa announced last week it was banning TikTok fromgovernment-owned devices following a review of the social media appby Canada's chief information officer.

Catherine Luelo determined it posed an unacceptable level of riskto privacy and security.

Nine provinces have since followed suit, while Ontario says it isconsidering a ban.

Yukon's minister of Highways and Public Works told the territorial assemblythat employees would be notified of its ban on March 2.

Federal and provincial privacy watchdogs recently announced ajoint investigation into whether TikTok complies with Canadianprivacy legislation.

The Nunavut government says its ban is an interim measure untilits security team reviews the full assessment by the federalgovernment. It says it manages a small amount of mobile phones.

Data collection the fear

The N.W.T. government says it decided to ban TikTok based onseveral risk factors, chiefly the application's data collectionmethods, which "can provide almost complete access" to thecontents of devices it has been downloaded on, making them morevulnerable to surveillance.

Nils Clarke, Yukon's minister of Highways and Public Works, saidhis department has the ability to delete specific apps fromgovernment-owned cellphones and prevent them from being downloaded. The territorial government said before issuing its ban, no one inits cabinet office had TikTok on their government-issued devices.

The Chinese government has a stake in TikTok's owner, ByteDance,and Chinese laws allow the country to demand access to user data.

The company that owns TikTok maintains that it does not sharedata with China's government and its data is not held in thatcountry.

Federal, provincial and territorial officials have said there isno evidence that government data has been compromised by usingTikTok.

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Metaand Canadian Press News Fellowship, which is not involved in the editorial process.