Justice Department responds to TikTok lawsuit, saying algorithm could enable Chinese government to influence US election

CNN
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The Justice Department said in a court filing late Friday that if TikTok continues to be operated by its current parent company, the Chinese government could covertly influence U.S. elections.

In papers filed in federal appeals court, prosecutors raised concerns that TikTok’s algorithm could be used in a “covert manipulation” campaign aimed at “influence[ing]the views of Americans for their own purposes.”

“Among other things, it would allow a foreign government to illegally interfere in our political system and political discourse, including our elections,” prosecutors wrote. The filing added, “if, for example, the Chinese government believed that the outcome of a particular U.S. election was sufficiently important to Chinese interests.”

“Allowing the Chinese government to maximise its use of TikTok at a moment of enormous importance poses an unacceptable risk to national security,” prosecutors wrote.

The filing is in response to a federal lawsuit TikTok filed against the U.S. government in May seeking to block a law that could have forced a nationwide ban on the app. The law, which President Joe Biden signed into law in April, says TikTok must find a new owner by mid-January 2025 or face a full ban in the United States.

The filing Friday marks the federal government’s first response to the lawsuit. The legal battle could decide whether U.S. security concerns about TikTok’s ties to China can outweigh the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users.

In their lawsuit, TikTok and Bytedance argue that the US law is unconstitutional because it violates the right to free speech and prevents Americans from accessing lawful information.

“For the first time in history,” TikTok’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, “Congress has passed a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban and prevents every American from participating in a unique online community of more than 1 billion people worldwide.”

The lawsuit follows years of accusations by the United States that TikTok’s ties to China could potentially expose Americans’ personal information to the Chinese government.

The Justice Department now says TikTok is misapplying the First Amendment. “The Act is intended to protect national security interests unique to TikTok’s ties to a hostile foreign power, not to suppress protected speech,” the Justice Department document reads, adding that ByteDance could sell TikTok to a U.S. affiliate and then the app could operate in the U.S. without disruption.

Senior law enforcement officials, speaking about the case file, said the Justice Department is concerned about any attempts by the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, to “weaponize technology,” such as apps and software running on phones used in the U.S.

One official said these concerns “are heightened when autocratic states require and coerce, as the PRC does, companies under their control to secretly transfer sensitive data to the Chinese government.”

Some department officials have already spoken out about the security risks posed by the video app, though not in the context of this lawsuit.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco warned against using the app last year, saying that “any company doing business in China is subject to China’s national security laws that require it to hand over data to the state, and there is reason for us to be very concerned.”

“I don’t use TikTok and I wouldn’t recommend anyone do that,” Monaco said.

“The TikTok app collects massive amounts of sensitive data from its 170 million U.S. users,” the DOJ documents say. “This collection includes data about users’ precise locations, viewing habits, and private messages—even phone contact information for users who don’t use TikTok themselves.”

Prosecutors wrote that some of the users TikTok collects data about are teenagers who could become “family members or potential future government employees.”

It’s clear from documents filed Friday that law enforcement officials believe TikTok can — and in some cases has — taken orders from the Chinese government.

Prosecutors wrote that the proprietary algorithm used by TikTok “can be manually manipulated, and its location in China would enable the Chinese government to covertly control the algorithm — and thus covertly shape the content that American users receive — to advance its own malicious purposes.”

Law enforcement officials, for example, are aware of one tool used in China that allows TikTok to block certain content on the app. While the tool is not believed to be used in the U.S., department officials said the existence of the technology raised serious concerns about whether the app could collect, censor or even promote certain content for American users.

Senior officials also raised concerns about the possibility of employees collecting bulk information from user content that covered issues such as gun control, abortion and religion.