Open Now
Open Now
Watch now

TikTok Sues Trump Administration ahead of Ban

TikTok sued the U.S. government on Monday, accusing the Trump administration of denying the company its due process rights by moving to ban the video-sharing app. “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 …

TikTok sued the U.S. government on Monday, accusing the Trump administration of denying the company its due process rights by moving to ban the video-sharing app.

“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,” TikTok said in a blog post announcing its lawsuit.

Earlier this month, President Trump ordered TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell off its U.S. assets as well as divest from “any data obtained or derived” from TikTok users in the U.S. within 90 days or risk the app being banned in the U.S.

“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance,” which is based in Beijing, “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” Trump wrote in his order.

In the company’s complaint, TikTok claims it spent nearly a year making “good faith” efforts to demonstrate to the government that the app poses no national security threat to the U.S., but

Despite those efforts, the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States “never articulated any reason why TikTok’s security measures were inadequate to address any national security concerns,” TikTok claimed.

“The Administration ignored the great lengths that TikTok has gone to in order to demonstrate our commitment to serving the US market,” the company said, noting that the personnel responsible for TikTok are based in the U.S., and data from U.S. users is stored on servers located in the U.S. and Singapore.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this month that he supports a potential ban on TikTok and warned that Chinese software companies doing business in the United States are “feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party, their national security apparatus … These are true national security issues.”

Microsoft is still in talks to potentially buy TikTok’s U.S. operations.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also reportedly pushed the administration to increase scrutiny of TikTok and its connections to China, discussing concerns about the rising rival to Facebook in meetings with GOP senators.

Follow us on Google News

Filed under