Samuel Cogolati, Ecolo federal deputy, was the guest of RTL info Signatures on Wednesday 1 March. Known for his pro-Uyghur positions, the elected official from Huy was the victim of a Chinese cyberattack. He finds himself in the crosshairs of China today and advocates limited access to TikTok.
This week, the US and Canadian governments decided to ban the use of TikTok on the device of their officials.
Samuel Cogolati, federal deputy (Ecolo), also warns TikTok users in Europe. “Viewers need to be told the truth: When you share videos on TikTok today, you are at risk”, he says. A “real risk”he says, since “the danger is that personal data is shared with Beijing”. Chinese companies, it has been official since 2017, are “legally obliged to share the data they have with us”, in particular the e-commerce giant Alibaba, which recently set up in Liège. Samuel Cogolati is obviously not asking all TikTok users to delete their accounts – incidentally hears the “entertainment” what the platform represents, but alert. “It raises the freedom of citizens”he concedes, but he nevertheless warns the population.
Protect “secret data”
Re “members of the government or senior officials”Samuel Cogolati calls for restricting as much as possible the use of the Chinese social network which therefore collects our data, although the politicians are rather fond of it, including the co-president of Ecolo, Rajae Maouane. “I call to follow the European recommendations and our own defense service to remove TikTok from work phones”, loose the MP on the set of Signatures. For what? Quite simply to protect all information, in particular that of institutions with possible “secret data”. “It could be dangerous.”