Janice R. Andrews
On Friday night, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal judge to deny TikTok’s effort to overturn a statute that would outlaw the app domestically. President Biden signed this bill into law in April, requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, located in China, to either sell the app or risk being banned. Citing national security concerns, the DOJ claimed that TikTok collected user opinions on abortion, gun control, and religion using internal search capabilities.
The Department of Justice’s submission to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit describes how a search function in Lark—the employee communication platform used by ByteDance and TikTok—permitted the gathering of user data in bulk. Data about user expressions and content pertaining to delicate subjects was included in this. The Department of Justice also contended that TikTok may alter content seen by Americans and that private data might be kept on Chinese servers.
TikTok has continuously refuted these allegations, claiming that any attempts to outlaw the app are unlawful. “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side,” TikTok said on social media platform X in reaction to the DOJ’s most recent submission.
The continuing legal dispute between TikTok and the US government over data privacy and national security is brought to light by this judicial struggle. The case’s verdict may have a big impact on the app’s future in the US as well as the larger discussion over data privacy and global digital sovereignty. The stakes are still quite high for TikTok and its millions of American users while the court deliberates.
