LOS ANGELES: Video-sharing social networking company TikTok on Monday filed a lawsuit against U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration over an executive order banning any U.S. transactions with its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
In the 39-page indictment acquired by Xinhua, Trump, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and the Department of Commerce (DOC) were listed as defendants. In regard to Trump’s suggestion of ByteDance paying a fee to the U.S. government for facilitating a deal to sell TikTok to a U.S. company, TikTok’s indictment also said that the president’s demands for payments “have no relationship to any conceivable national security concern.”
Since last year, U.S. authorities have repeatedly accused TikTok of being a potential threat to U.S. national security. U.S. officials alleged that the company, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, could pass on data it collects from Americans’ streaming videos to the Chinese government, a claim rejectd by TikTok, which said it has never been asked to do so. According to the Los Angeles-based company, key personnel responsible for TikTok are all Americans based in the United States, while TikTok’s U.S. content moderation is likewise led by a U.S.-based team and operates independently from China, and the popular application stores U.S. user data on servers located in the United States and Singapore. – Agencies
