As Republican lawmakers in the United States introduce legislation to ban TikTok, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada's electronic spy agency is keeping a close eye on the Chinese phone app..The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's foreign signals intelligence agency, is keeping an eye on TikTok as Republican lawmakers move to ban the app in the US.."I think people are concerned about TikTok. I think people are obviously watching very carefully," Trudeau said in a Thursday scrum with reporters..There are growing concerns in the US TikTok's owner, ByteDance Ltd., could be using the app to spy on people on behalf of the Chinese government. On Tuesday, Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation that would block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China and Russia..Back in August 2020, the US Senate unanimously approved a bill that banned federal employees from using the app on government-issued devices..A spokesperson for TikTok said the company never provided Canadian user data to the Chinese government. It claimed Canadian user data is stored in data centres in the US and Singapore..When Trudeau was asked about the risk of Chinese infiltration of Canadian government accounts on Twitter, he said the federal government is "watching what the Americans are doing.".There appears to be tripartisan consensus the federal government needs to investigate TikTok. Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said the federal government should investigate TikTok over national security concerns..“I think the government needs to take this threat much more seriously than they have. If you look at what our closest allies have done, they’ve all taken some action," Chong said on Thursday..NDP ethics critic Matthew Green also said his party believes Canada has fallen behind its European counterparts when it comes to data protection.."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 said.
