[ad_1]
SAN FRANCISCO: The administration of US President Donald Trump has insisted on the need to ban TikTok due to national security concerns in a new court filing ahead of a plan to make the video app unavailable on November 12. .
The filing comes as the court considers the legality of the administration’s offer to make the Chinese-owned app unavailable in the United States, where it has 100 million users.
“The president should not be prevented from regulating threats to national security simply because a foreign adversary conceals his activities within a media company,” says the document filed Friday in federal court in Washington.
The Trump administration is seeking to persuade the judge in the case to allow it to go ahead with restrictions on the video-sharing app, which it claims has ties to the Chinese government through its parent company ByteDance.
In September, a temporary court order prevented the government from removing TikTok from mobile app download platforms.
That order from the Trump administration had sought to ban new downloads of the app, but would continue to allow TikTok use until November 12, when all use would be blocked.
The judge at the time denied TikTok’s request to suspend the November 12 ban, but the court has yet to consider the merits of legal arguments on whether the social platform should remain available to Americans.
TikTok has repeatedly defended itself against allegations of data transfers to the Chinese government.
It says that its servers where user information is stored are in the United States and Singapore.
The company has also said that the ban is unnecessary as negotiations are underway to restructure ownership of TikTok to address national security issues raised by the administration.
A tentative deal has been revealed that would make Silicon Valley giant Oracle the technology partner of TikTok and a stakeholder in a new entity to be known as TikTok Global.
