DeepSeek blocked on government devices
DeepSeek is the latest Chinese tech company to have its product banned on all Australian government devices, alongside TikTok. A New South Wales government department initially made the move with the federal government following suit. An RMIT expert is available to comment.
Dr Dana Mckay, Senior Lecturer in Innovative Interactive Technologies, School of Computing Technologies
“The reason Chinese-made and -owned tools are being banned is that the data they collect is available to the Chinese government not just when a crime has been committed, but also for economic or social reasons.
“DeepSeek even collects keystroke patterns, which can be used to identify individuals, potentially allowing them to match in-work searches with leisure time searches, potentially leading to national security risks.
“It is fair to ask whether DeepSeek is more dangerous to Australian national security than, say, OpenAI which collects similar data: the difference is that OpenAI will only give data to government to comply with relevant laws, and this typically means where a crime may have been committed.
“Whether governments should be concerned about the level of data collected by commercial companies, such as OpenAI and Google, is still a significant question, but one that is separate to the national security concerns raised by China's data sovereignty laws.”
Dana McKay is Associate Dean, Interaction, Technology and Information in the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University. Dana's research focuses on ensuring advances in digital information technologies make the world a fairer and more equitable place.
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