TikTok app
Narinder Nanu | AFP | Getty Images
TikTok, the video-sharing application owned by China-based ByteDance, on Monday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to ban the company’s U.S. operations.
In a blog post, TikTok claimed that the ban prevented the company from delaying process, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. TikTok added that the executive mandate of President Donald Trump, made earlier this month under the International Act of Emergency Economic Powers Act, ignores the company’s efforts to prove that it does not share data with the Chinese government and is not a national security threat.
“We do not take the government lightly, but we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees,” TikTok said. “The Executive Order threatens to ban our U.S. operations – eliminating the creation of 10,000 U.S. jobs and irreparably damaging to the millions of Americans who turn to this app for entertainment, connectivity and legitimate living conditions that are essential especially during the pandemic – we just have no choice. “
The White House declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The Trump administration has expressed its concerns about U.S. data security and data privacy with several Chinese companies, including Huawei and WeChat. ByteDance claimed that the government had provided “voluminous documentation” explaining TikTok’s security practices to prove that it was a private company that did not share data with the Chinese government. After all, ByteDance has seen the administration’s attacks on TikTok as an escalation of an economic battle with China that strictly regulates or prohibits American Internet companies from operating within its borders.
TikTok continues to discuss a sale of its U.S., Canadian, Australian and New Zealand operations with Microsoft, Oracle and other investors in the company, according to people familiar with the matter. The lawsuit calls into question the U.S. Foreign Investment Commission’s decision that ByteDance will divest its U.S. holdings by November 12. The ban under the International Emergency Powers Act is set to expire on 15 September.
While the ByteDance lawsuit did not specifically challenge the CFIUS order, the company claimed that “CFIUS never articulated any reason why TikTok’s security measures were not sufficient to address national security issues.” ByteDance claimed that CFIUS made the first contact to check its purchase of Musical.ly, the former name of TikTok, in 2019.
“The executive order is trying to ban TikTok purely because of the speculative possibility that the application could be manipulated by the Chinese government,” TikTok said in its lawsuit. “However, as the US Government is well aware, our plaintiffs have taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s US user data, including by having TikTok access to such data outside of China (in the United States and Singapore) and by building software barriers that ensure that TikTok keeps its US user data separate from the user data of other ByteDance products. “
TikTok also claimed that the executive order was a violation of international emergency law, which it claimed was used by the Trump administration last year “to raise concerns among U.S. telecommunications companies about the ability of certain telecommunications companies to access to ‘information and communication misuse technology and services.’ “TikTok notes that it is not a telecommunications provider and” provides the types of technology and services considered by the 2019. Executive Order. “
Several presidencies have used the act for a range of issues, including terrorism and human rights violations. Trump stated in his executive order August 6 that “the proliferation of mobile applications in the United States and ownership of companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. “
.
