TikTok to file lawsuit against Trump Administration over order banning app in US
WASHINGTON (WJW) — TikTok is looking to sue the Trump Administration over the president’s executive order banning the company from the United States, NPR reports.
Sources say TikTok will file the lawsuit as soon as Tuesday. It will be filled in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, as that is where TikTok’s American operations are based.
The lawsuit will allegedly argue that President Trump’s “far-reaching action” is “unconstitutional” because it did not give the company a chance to respond.
The suit also alleges the administration’s national security justification for the order is “baseless,” the news outlet shared.
The White House has reportedly declined to comment on the expected litigation. However, they did release the following statement to NPR defending the president’s executive order:
The Administration is committed to protecting the American people from all cyber related threats to critical infrastructure, public health and safety, and our economic and national security
White House Spokesman Judd Deere
Trump issued an executive order on Thursday that would ban the social media app from operating in the country in 45 days if it is not sold by its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said on Wednesday that the U.S. government was expanding its crackdown on Chinese technology, including personal apps, because of alleged security threats. Pompeo called out TikTok and WeChat, which is also owned by ByteDance, by name.
Trump’s executive order alleges that TikTok “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
If the order goes into effect, the app could be prohibited from sending software updates to its U.S. users, eventually rendering TikTok unusable on smartphones and nonfunctional.