TikTok sues US government to stop app shutdown and undo a new law

The Senate officially banned TikTok in the United States, giving the popular app owner the choice of selling it to a US government-approved buyer or having it banned from app marketplaces.

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The US government has deemed TikTok a national security risk due to its owner being China-based company ByteDance, which officials believe have ties to the Chinese government. More specifically, the US government believes TikTok is capable of scraping the personal data of 170 million Americans, and that data could then be shared with the Chinese government. Furthermore, the US government believe TikTok could be used to spread misinformation throughout the US.

The banning of the app gave its owner 270 days to sell TikTok, with an additional 90-day presidential extension. TikTok and ByteDance have since responded to the new legislature by filing a lawsuit that directly challenges the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Biden signed into law last month.

The complaint argues the new law is unconstitutional, and the maximum granted period of time is simply not long enough to complete a sale of the app. This would mean that on January 19, 2025, when the new law comes into effect, TikTok will be forced to shut down, removing access from 170 million Americans.

"While US courts have in many contexts been far too deferential to the federal government's claims of national security harms, there is no First Amendment exception for national security: the government will have to demonstrate to the court that the national security concern is real and not hypothetical or conjectural (as it appears to be in the last public ODNI report) and that a total ban on TikTok as it currently exists is the appropriately tailored means of addressing that national security concern," said David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a US-based cyber liberties advocacy group to The Register