By David Shepardson
(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department late on Friday asked a federal appeals court to uphold an April law requiring China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or face legal action. imposed a ban.
The DOJ argued in its filing that Chinese-owned TikTok poses a serious national security threat due to its access to Americans’ vast personal data, claiming that China can surreptitiously manipulate information Americans consume through TikTok.
“The serious threat to national security posed by TikTok is real,” the ministry said. “TikTok provides the Chinese government with the means to undermine U.S. national security in two major ways: data collection and covert manipulation of content.”
The Biden administration has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss lawsuits from TikTok, parent company ByteDance and a group of TikTok creators seeking to block the law that could ban the app used by 170 million Americans is used.
TikTok has repeatedly denied that it would ever share U.S. user data with China or that it would manipulate video results.
“The administration has never provided evidence to support its claims, even when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, the government is once again taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind classified information,” TikTok posted on social media platform X in response to the DOJ cut.
The DOJ filings detail extensive national security concerns about ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok.
“China’s long-term geopolitical strategy includes developing and pre-positioning assets that the country can deploy at appropriate times,” the ministry said.
The government acknowledged in a separate statement that it had no information that the Chinese government had accessed the data of American TikTok users, but said the risk of that possibility was too great.
“The United States does not need to wait for its foreign adversary to take specific harmful actions before responding to such a threat,” the document said.
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The government also filed a classified document with the court detailing additional security concerns about ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok, as well as broader statements from the FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and DOJ’s National Security Division.
ByteDance told the US government that TikTok’s source code contained 2 billion lines of code, making a full review impossible. “Oracle (NYSE:) estimated that it would take three years to revise this code,” DOJ added, excluding additional changes.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden on April 24, gives ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House says it wants Chinese ownership to end for national security reasons, but not through a ban on TikTok.
The department rejected all of TikTok’s arguments, including that the law violates the First Amendment freedom of expression of Americans who use the short video app, saying the law addresses national security concerns, not speech, and focuses on China’s ability to exploit TikTok. to access sensitive personal information of Americans.
TikTok users have “numerous other well-known platforms” such as YouTube, Facebook (NASDAQ:), Instagram, Snapchat and X that they could use instead, the DOJ said.
The DOJ added that TikTok’s $2 billion plan to protect U.S. user data was insufficient, saying the company’s proposed agreement was not sufficient, in part because U.S. officials do not trust ByteDance and because of its “lack of the government’s confidence that it had the means or ability to catch violations.”
The appeals court will hear oral arguments on the legal challenge on September 16, pushing the question of TikTok’s fate into the final weeks of the November 5 presidential election.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has joined TikTok, saying in June that he would never support a TikTok ban. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is poised to become the Democratic nominee, joined TikTok this week.
The law bans app stores such as Apple (NASDAQ:) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:)’s Google from offering TikTok and prohibits internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance spins off the company.
Driven by concerns among U.S. lawmakers that China could access data on Americans or spy on them with the app, Congress overwhelmingly passed the measure just weeks after it was introduced.
