TikTok Challenges Trump Executive Orders

Company is suing government over attempted ban
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 24, 2020 12:56 PM CDT
TikTok Is Fighting Trump's Executive Orders
Icons for TikTok and WeChat are seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing.   (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Video app TikTok says it will wage a legal fight against the Trump administration's efforts to ban the popular, Chinese-owned service over national-security concerns. TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, insisted Monday that it is not a national-security threat and that the government is acting without evidence or due process, the AP reports. The company said it will file suit against the government Monday in federal court in California. President Trump 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 the past year, TikTok has tried to put distance between its app, which it says has 100 million US users, and its Chinese owners

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers 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. 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 Trump's Aug. 6 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.”

(More TikTok stories.)

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