NOS News•
Norway’s justice minister has apologized for misinforming parliament about her use of TikTok on her work phone. Emilie Enger Mehl, 29, admitted that she had the popular video app on her phone for about a month last fall. She previously claimed that she could not answer parliamentary questions for security reasons.
TikTok has a Chinese owner, the company Bytedance, and in many Western countries there are concerns about the Chinese influence on the fast-growing app. Chinese employees can also access TikTok data from European users and it turned out at the end of last year that Bytedance staff had spied on American journalists.
There were already questions in September about the minister’s TikTok use. The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that Enger Mehl posted pictures and videos on TikTok of official occasions she attended. The question then arose whether China could not access sensitive information from the government due to the minister’s TikTok use.
‘Took too long’
The opposition called Enger Mehl stupid, because as Minister of Justice she should have known better. Enger Mehl herself insisted that she had consulted her ministry before installing the video app. A week ago, she admitted that she actually had the app on her work phone.
The Minister of Justice acknowledged that it has taken too long for her to open up. “I should have been open about this earlier. I am sorry that the matter turned out this way. In retrospect, I understand that I should have been open about the fact that I had TikTok on a government phone,” said the politician of the Center Party .
