BY COMFORT OGBONNA
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) requested a federal appeals court on Friday to uphold an April law mandating that China-based ByteDance must sell TikTok’s U.S. assets by January 19, or the app will face a ban.
The DOJ argued in its filing that TikTok poses a significant national security threat due to its access to extensive personal data of American users, claiming that the Chinese government could covertly manipulate the information Americans consume via TikTok.
“The serious national security threat posed by TikTok is real,” the department stated. “TikTok provides the Chinese government with the means to undermine U.S. national security through data collection and covert content manipulation.”
The Biden administration asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss lawsuits filed by TikTok, its parent company ByteDance, and a group of TikTok creators challenging the law that could potentially ban the app, which is used by 170 million Americans.
TikTok has consistently denied sharing U.S. user data with China or manipulating video content. In response to the DOJ’s filing, TikTok posted on the social media platform X, stating, “The government has never provided proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information.”
The DOJ’s filing outlines extensive national security concerns regarding ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok. “China’s long-term geopolitical strategy involves developing and positioning assets that can be deployed at critical moments,” the department explained.
The government also acknowledged that it had no information suggesting the Chinese government had accessed U.S. TikTok user data but argued that the potential risk was too great.
“The United States is not required to wait until its foreign adversary takes specific detrimental actions before responding to such a threat,” the filing noted.
The government submitted a classified document to the court detailing additional security concerns about ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok, as well as broader declarations from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the DOJ’s National Security Division.
ByteDance informed the U.S. government that TikTok’s source code consists of 2 billion lines of code, making a full review impractical. “Oracle estimated it would take three years to review this body of code,” excluding further updates, the DOJ added.
Signed into law by President Joe Biden on April 24, the legislation gives ByteDance until January 19 to divest TikTok or face a ban. The White House has stated it seeks to end Chinese ownership of TikTok on national security grounds, rather than banning the app outright. The DOJ rejected TikTok’s arguments that the law violates the First Amendment rights of Americans using the app, arguing that the law addresses national security concerns rather than issues of free speech and aims to prevent China from exploiting TikTok to access sensitive personal information of Americans.
The DOJ also noted that TikTok users have “numerous other well-known platforms” such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and X, that they could use instead.
The DOJ further criticized TikTok’s $2 billion plan to protect U.S. user data as insufficient, expressing doubts about ByteDance’s trustworthiness and its ability to detect violations.
The appeals court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the legal challenge on September 16, putting the issue of TikTok’s future into the final weeks leading up to the November 5 presidential election. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who recently joined TikTok, stated in June that he would never support a TikTok ban. Vice President Kamala Harris, expected to be the Democratic nominee, also joined TikTok this week.
The law prohibits app stores like Apple and Google’s from offering TikTok and bars internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance divests the app. The measure, driven by concerns among U.S. lawmakers that China could use the app to access data on Americans or spy on them, was passed overwhelmingly by Congress just weeks after it was introduced.
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