Video-sharing app TikTok yesterday filed court papers against US president Donald Trump’s executive order that looks to block it in the country.
“Today we are filing a complaint in federal court challenging the administration’s efforts to ban TikTok in the US. As a company we have always focused on transparency, so we want to explain why we are taking this step,” says the company.
The lawsuit comes after Trump signed the directive on 6 August, blocking all transactions with TikTok’s parent Chinese-based ByteDance in an effort to “address the national emergency”.
The US president also issued an order that that gave ByteDance 90 days to divest the US operations of TikTok.
Since then, US companies such as Microsoft and Oracle have been lining up as potential buyers for the popular short video app.
As the trade war between the US and China rages on, the US government has accelerated its efforts to purge Chinese apps and technology companies that it deems untrustworthy.
However, in a statement, TikTok says the executive order issued by the administration has the potential to strip the rights of its community without any evidence to justify such an extreme action, and without any due process.
“We strongly disagree with the administration’s position that TikTok is a national security threat and we have articulated these objections previously,” says the company.
“Now is the time for us to act. We do not take suing the government lightly; however, we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees.”
In its complaint TikTok says it makes clear that it believes the administration ignored the company’s extensive efforts to address its concerns, which it conducted fully and in good faith even as it disagreed with the concerns themselves.
Says the company: “The executive order seeks to ban TikTok purportedly because of the speculative possibility that the application could be manipulated by the Chinese government. But, as the US government is well aware, plaintiffs have taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s US user data, including by having TikTok store such data outside of China (in the US and Singapore) and by erecting software barriers that help ensure that TikTok stores its US user data separately from the user data of other ByteDance products.”
It notes that these actions were made known to the US government during a recent US national security review of ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of a China-based company, Musical.ly.
It adds that as part of that review, plaintiffs provided voluminous documentation to the US government documenting TikTok’s security practices and made commitments that were more than sufficient to address any conceivable US government privacy or national security concerns.
It points out that the administration ignored the great lengths that TikTok has gone to in order to demonstrate its commitment to serving the US market.
“The key personnel responsible for TikTok, including its CEO, global chief security officer, and general counsel, are all Americans based in the US – and, therefore, are not subject to Chinese law. US content moderation is likewise led by a US-based team and operates independently from China.”
TikTok believes the executive order is not rooted in bona fide national security concerns.
“Independent national security and information security experts have criticised the political nature of this executive order, and expressed doubt as to whether its stated national security objective is genuine.”
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