On Friday, August 2nd, 21 state attorneys general in the United States along with over 50 members of Congress jointly supported the Department of Justice in defending a federal new law that mandates the separation of Tiktok from its Chinese parent company.
The law requires the China-based company ByteDance to sell its short video social application TikTok assets in the United States by January 19th next year, or face a nationwide ban.
A court document jointly submitted by 21 state attorneys general led by the attorneys general of Montana and Virginia stated: “TikTok poses a threat to national security and consumer privacy. Allowing TikTok to operate in the U.S. without severing its ties with the Chinese Communist Party would expose Americans to the risk of the CCP accessing and exploiting their data.”
Additionally, a group of over 50 members of Congress led by Michigan Republican Congressman and chairman of the House Committee on China Issues, John Moolenaar, and the committee’s top Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, stated in another document that the law “provides affected companies with a clear, feasible path to address the imminent and non-speculative national security threats posed by their current ownership structure.”
Signatories of the congressional document included Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, and top Democrat of the Energy and Commerce Committee Frank Pallone.
These lawmakers emphasized that “Congress’ action is not to punish ByteDance but to protect national security.”
In March of this year, more than twenty lawmakers including former Wisconsin Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher and Illinois Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi introduced a bipartisan bill named the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Due to concerns by Congress members that the Chinese Communist Party might access data of Americans or conduct espionage through this application, the bill gained overwhelming support in both the House and Senate just weeks after its proposal.
On April 23rd, as part of a $95 billion dual package foreign aid plan for Ukraine and Israel, the TikTok separation bill passed in the Senate. The next day, it was signed into law by President Biden, initiating a 270-day countdown for separation.
On May 7th, ByteDance and TikTok filed a lawsuit in the U.S. federal court, citing infringement on freedom of speech, seeking a ruling that the “sell or ban” law is unconstitutional and asking to stop its enforcement. Concurrently, a group of TikTok creators also filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the law that could potentially ban the app from being used by 170 million Americans.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice requested the U.S. Appeals Court to dismiss legal challenges against the law, stating that “the serious national security threat posed by TikTok is real.”
On Friday, August 2nd, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, alleging they violated children’s privacy on social media applications.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is set to hold oral arguments on this legal challenge on September 16th, placing TikTok’s fate in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election.
(Some parts of this article were referenced from Reuters’ related reports)
Picture: On August 3, 2020, in Arlington, Virginia, the logo of the social media application TikTok is displayed on an iPhone screen against the backdrop of the U.S. flag.