U.S. court gives TikTok some life in the U.S. by ordering a preliminary injunction
Users create videos of 15 seconds to 60 seconds in length showing off their lip-syncing abilities, dancing skills, comedic timing, and more. These are shared via the TikTok app. The Trump administration considers the app and its owner to be national security threats that allegedly steal personal data from U.S. users and send it to the Communist Chinese government. The president ordered TikTok banned unless its owner agreed to divest itself of some of the app’s U.S. operations.
The attorney also stated that the president is exceeding his authority by ordering the ban. “The consequences immediately are grave,” Hall said to the the judge. “It would be no different than the government locking the doors to a public forum, roping off that town square.”
Department of Justice attorney Daniel Schwei argued the case for the U.S. government. Schwei said that “the concern here is about data security risk and leaving data vulnerable to the Chinese government. It is a threat today, it is a risk today, and therefore it deserves to be addressed today.” The U.S. government decided last week to extend its deadline to allow for more sale discussions. The DOJ attorney said in the courtroom that TikTok is “challenging a national security determination by the president as well as the judgment of the secretary of commerce about what’s necessary to mitigate those national security harms. And I think the court owes significant deference to that.” On Friday, the U.S. cited the opinion of FBI Director Christopher Wray who said that China poses the “greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property.”
China Daily, the government’s state-run paper, wrote last week that “What the United States has done to TikTok is almost the same as a gangster forcing an unreasonable and unfair business deal on a legitimate company.” Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of state-run Global Times, said in a tweet that Beijing will never agree to the deal between Oracle, Walmart and ByteDance for a reason that is quite ironic. Hu said that the Chinese government would see the deal endangering its national security.
