The DoJ Accuses TikTok of Transferring Sensitive US Data to China

• In response to TikTok's legal challenge against its ban, the DoJ has released a fresh report accusing the company of collecting the opinions of US citizens on some very sensitive topics and shipping them to China.
• The company is also accused of intentionally censoring certain content on its platform at the request of the Chinese government.
• TikTok isn't rattled by this filing. It's still confident of winning the legal battle.

The US Department of Justice has accused TikTok of collecting the opinions of US citizens on some very sensitive topics such as abortion, religion, and gun control and shipping them to China.

According to reports, TikTok uses an internal employee communication tool called Lark" to transfer the collected data to Chinese servers.

'Lark contained multiple internal search tools that had been developed and run by China-based ByteDance engineers for scraping TikTok user data, including US user data.' - DoJ filing

TikTok has also been accused of censoring certain content at the request of the Chinese government. However, it's not clear whether these censorships are happening within the US as well because the main policies behind this tool only apply to Chinese users. However, it is possible that in some cases, it has been used outside China.

TikTok doesn't seem to be rattled by this filing. In a post on X, it said nothing in the new brief changes the fact that the constitution is on its side and that banning TikTok would be directly silencing the voices of its 170 million US users, which is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

It's still confident that it will win the legal battle because the government has no evidence to prove these allegations.

A Little Background to the Story

These allegations are a response to TikTok's attempt at getting the infamous TikTok Ban" bill repealed. For those who don't know, earlier this year US lawmakers passed a bill that will force TikTok to either cut ties with its parent company ByteDance or risk getting banned in the US.

ByteDance is a Chinese company. And since the US is not on the best terms with China at the moment, it's worried that Chinese officials can use its influence on ByteDance to spy on US citizens through TikTok.

Although both companies have repeatedly said they don't share user data with the government, US lawmakers are not ready to budge.

So from the day the legislation was passed in January, TikTok was given 9 months to cut ties with ByteDance and an additional 3 months are to be granted if the president of the US determines enough progress has been made towards the separation by the end of 9 months.

So in total, TikTok was given a year which means the ban would be executed on January 19, 2025.

What's up with Oracle?

Even Oracle tried to intervene and work out a deal so that TikTok could continue to operate in the US but that offer was rejected by the DoJ.

• Basically, the company wanted to become ByteDance's US-based technology partner under a "national security agreement" (NSA).
• Under this, it would sift through TikTok's data, find the ones concerning the US and its citizens, and ensure that they are stored on US servers.

However, in this case, the company would still have ties with ByteDance's leadership, which is not something US authorities are comfortable with.

It also offered to be an overseer of TikTok's source code, but this too was rejected because, given the length of the codes, it would take at least 3 years to completely review it.

In simple terms, the DoJ doesn't seem to think that any tech company will be able to get the job done properly, and separating TikTok from ByteDance is the only way.

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