In its first detailed response to a legal challenge, the agency said TikTok’s proposed changes wouldn’t prevent China from using it to collect U.S. users’ data or spread propaganda.
The Justice Department argued in a court filing on Friday that TikTok should be required to sell its American operations to resolve national security concerns about its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
In the government’s first detailed response to TikTok’s lawsuit challenging a new U.S. law that could ban the social media app, the Justice Department said measures that TikTok previously offered to address those security concerns — including walling off U.S. user data domestically — were insufficient. The Chinese government could still collect sensitive data on Americans or spread propaganda, the agency argued, and it has incentive to misuse the app because of larger geopolitical goals.
And while TikTok argued in its suit that the law violated the First Amendment rights of its 170 million U.S. users, the Justice Department contended that those users were free to turn to other social media sites if TikTok was banned or sold.
“Given TikTok’s broad reach within the United States, the capacity for China to use TikTok’s features to achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests creates a national-security threat of immense depth and scale,” the government said in its filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Under the law, any challenges must begin in that court.
If successful in making its case, the government could force the sale or ban of TikTok in the United States, under a landmark law that President Biden signed in April. If ByteDance doesn’t sell TikTok’s American operations to a non-Chinese owner by mid-January, app stores and web hosting services will be required to stop working with TikTok, a one-two punch devised to cut off the service domestically.
TikTok sued in May to block the law, arguing that a sale isn’t possible and that a ban will hurt small businesses. The company has also said it offered extraordinary commitments to the U.S. government to address its security concerns, including giving an American company oversight of its algorithm and storing all data domestically. The fight is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court.