U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted on the need to ban Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok citing national security concerns and has decided on a new date where it will hopefully make the app completely unavailable for usage in the country.
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His administration had filed new court papers urging Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to allow them to move ahead with restricting the use of TikTok as part of its efforts to crack down on “national security threats” allegedly posed by China-owned apps.
Trump had signed an executive order last August claiming that TikTok takes a lot of information from its millions of users, including their online search history and location data, which it might be sending to Beijing authorities. TikTok, however, has denied these allegations.
“The President should not be prevented from regulating national-security threats simply because a foreign adversary cloaks its activities within a media company,” said government lawyers in the new court papers.
Should the Trump administration be allowed to push through with its plan, TikTok will officially be unusable starting November 12.
The company continues to fight back against the restrictions with its own court filings, urging that it’s a violation of rights to free speech. TikTok and its owner, ByteDance Ltd., also claim to be undergoing negotiations with US companies to restructure its ownership which could maintain the app’s U.S. operations. It is still currently under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment.
(ALSO READ: You can no longer download TikTok and WeChat in this country starting Sept 20)
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