Norway’s justice minister apologized on Wednesday for failing to admit, during questioning in parliament, that he had installed and used TikTok on his government-supplied phone.
The popular video-sharing app is Chinese-owned, which has raised fears in the West that Beijing could use it to harvest user data or spread pro-China narratives or disinformation.
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Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl, 29, told lawmakers on Wednesday that she installed TikTok on her government phone for about a month last fall and has since deleted it. When questioned in the past by opposition lawmakers, she had sidestepped the issue on the grounds of “security reasons”.
Norway’s justice minister publicly apologized for installing and using TikTok on his state-owned device.
“I could have been open about this earlier,” Enger Mehl said on Wednesday. “I’m sorry it turned out this way. … I see in retrospect that I should have been open about having TikTok on a (government) phone sooner.”
The matter came to light in September, when Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that Enger Mehl’s TikTok posts included photos and videos of his official duties. This raised concerns that sensitive information and government activities could reach Chinese authorities.
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In a Feb. 1 television interview, Enger Mehl admitted installing TikTok on her government phone, three months after she was first asked. She said she consulted with her ministry before the installation.
Erna Solberg, a former prime minister now in opposition, said it was “stupid that a justice minister who is responsible for security laws should install TikTok on his work phone”. During his eight-year tenure, Solberg advised government officials against TikTok on work phones.
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TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. Several US states have moved to ban the video-sharing app from state devices for government employees.
