Meta, other US tech giants aren’t ‘defending Australians from surveillance’, expert tells inquiry

Cryptographer Vanessa Teague urges parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference to ‘think critically’ about submissions that call for a ban on Chinese apps over alleged links to the Communist Party

Meta and its competitors’ social media networks are designed to misdirect and misinform, and benefit their own business models, the expert adds

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Published: 8:20pm, 20 Jul 2023

Social media platforms headquartered in democratic countries such as the United States do not necessarily support democratic rights, as many of these platforms “also invade individual privacy on a scale that is inimical to human rights”, a prominent Australian cryptographer has said.

Vanessa Teague, an associate professor at the Australian National University, has lodged a late submission to an Australian parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference through social media days before it was due to put out a report, asking the inquiry “to think critically about what they had been told” by other submissions.

Many of those submissions had specifically targeted China, and called for a ban on Chinese apps WeChat and TikTok, because of their alleged links to the Communist Party.

The inquiry, aimed at investigating risks to Australia’s democracy from foreign interference through social media, was set up late last year and is due to publish a report on its findings on August 1.

Australian senator and prominent China hawk James Paterson, who is presiding over the inquiry, had previously sought to make the inquiry’s hearings specifically about China, including questioning TikTok representatives about China’s alleged rights abuses.