TikTok, the wildly popular video-sharing service owned by China's ByteDance, is taking its grievance against the government to court. The company announced Monday that it has filed a lawsuit against the administration of President Trump, who earlier this month signed an Executive Order (EO) banning U.S. companies from doing business with ByteDance. TikTok's suit was submitted to a federal court in Los Angeles.
In its lawsuit, TikTok argues that the EO is entirely unjustified and violates the company's constitutional right to due process of law, among other transgressions.
Image source: Getty Images.
The administration issued the EO over concerns that TikTok, with its apparent numerous security flaws, represents a "national emergency."
"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," the EO reads. This "threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information."
TikTok begs to differ. In a written statement, the company delivered the following rebuttal:
[A]s the U.S. government is well aware, Plaintiffs have taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok's U.S. user data, including by having TikTok store such data outside of China (in the United States and Singapore) and by erecting software barriers that help ensure that TikTok stores its U.S. user data separately from the user data of other ByteDance products.
ByteDance has come under significant pressure to divest TikTok to a U.S. investor. So far, Microsoft (MSFT 0.50%) has held discussions with ByteDance to purchase the unit; Oracle (ORCL 0.85%) -- somewhat surprisingly as it operates mainly a database business -- is apparently also making a play. Earlier this month, Trump characterized Oracle as "a great company" that would be a suitable owner.
Neither Microsoft nor Oracle has yet commented on TikTok's lawsuit.
