TikTok to fight Trump over pending order to ban app
The app’s owner ByteDance said it will file a lawsuit against the US government.
Video app TikTok said it will wage a legal fight against the US government’s efforts to ban the popular, Chinese-owned service over national-security concerns.
TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, insisted it is not a national security threat and that the US government is acting without evidence or due process.
The company said it will file a lawsuit against the government in federal court in California. A copy of the complaint could not be obtained.
US President Donald Trump has issued two executive orders in August, first a sweeping but unspecified ban on any “transaction” with ByteDance, to take effect within 45 days. He then ordered ByteDance to sell assets used to support TikTok in the US.
Over past year, TikTok has tried to put distance between its app, which it says has 100 million US users, and its Chinese owners. It installed a former top Disney executive as its American CEO and named two other Americans chief security officer and general counsel. TikTok has also said it is willing to sell its US operations and has held talks with Microsoft to buy parts of its English-language app. Other companies and investors have reportedly expressed interest as well.
Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress have shared concerns about TikTok that ranged from its vulnerability to censorship and misinformation campaigns to the safety of user data and children’s privacy. But the administration has provided no specific evidence that TikTok has made US users’ data available to the Chinese government.
Instead, officials point to the hypothetical threat that lies in the Chinese government’s ability to demand co-operation from Chinese companies. TikTok says it has not shared US user data with the Chinese government and would not do so, and that it does not censor videos at the request of Chinese authorities.
In excerpts from its forthcoming complaint, TikTok said that it has protected US user data by storing it in the US and Singapore, not China, and “by erecting software barriers that help ensure that TikTok stores its US user data separately from the user data of other ByteDance products”.
The company says Mr Trump’s order banning TikTok “with no notice or opportunity to be heard” violated its Fifth Amendment due-process rights. It also says that the order is not acting “based on a bona fide national emergency” and seeks to ban activities that “have not been found to be an unusual and extraordinary threat”, which it says is required by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Mr Trump cited as one of the bases for his order.
