Justice Department responds to TikTok’s lawsuit against US divest-or-ban law, calls platform a national security risk
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has defended a new law that requires TikTok parent ByteDance to sell the platform or face a ban, arguing TikTok poses a significant national security risk.
TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the law signed by President Joe Biden this spring, which requires TikTok to sell its US business or face a ban as of next January. The companies described the law as “unconstitutional.”
The DoJ submitted a response on Friday to the US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, The New York Times reported Saturday (July 27).
In its response, the DOJ raised concerns about the app’s potential to be used by the Chinese government to collect sensitive data on Americans and spread propaganda, the NYT said.
“The serious national-security threat posed by TikTok is real, as evidenced by the public record and confirmed by classified information supplied by the intelligence community.”
US Department of Justice
TikTok, which has 170 million users in the US, has repeatedly claimed that it has taken extensive measures to address the government’s concerns. However, the DOJ reportedly argues that these steps are insufficient, citing China’s authoritarian regime and its history of requiring companies to share information in secret.
“Given TikTok’s broad reach within the United States, the capacity for China to use TikTok’s features to achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests creates a national-security threat of immense depth and scale,” the DOJ said in its filing cited by the NYT.
“The serious national-security threat posed by TikTok is real, as evidenced by the public record and confirmed by classified information supplied by the intelligence community,” the DOJ added.
The DOJ also highlighted TikTok’s algorithm that determines which content users see, arguing that it gives Beijing the ability to influence public opinion in the US.
“Given TikTok’s broad reach within the United States, the capacity for China to use TikTok’s features to achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests creates a national-security threat of immense depth and scale.”
US Department of Justice
“That algorithm can be manually manipulated, and its location in China would permit the Chinese government to covertly control the algorithm — and thus secretly shape the content that American users receive — for its own malign purposes,” the department said in the filing.
In response to the DOJ’s filing, TikTok sad in a statement posted on social media: “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side.
“The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the First Amendment. As we’ve said before, the government has never put forth proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information. We remain confident we will prevail in court.”
The DC appeals court has set an accelerated schedule to hear arguments from TikTok in September. TikTok says the expedited hearing date means it may no longer have to file for an injunction to prevent the law from being enforced, Reuters reported.
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