Spacex and NASA plan to launch the crew-9 mission next month.

In its filing, the DOJ stated that TikTok, which is owned by China, poses a major national security danger because it has access to huge amounts of personal data about Americans, and that China can surreptitiously control material that Americans consume through TikTok.

“The serious national-security threat posed by TikTok is real,” the department stated. “TikTok provides the Chinese government the means to undermine US national security in two principal ways: data collection and covert content manipulation.”

The Biden administration has petitioned the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss cases filed by TikTok, parent firm ByteDance, and a group of TikTok producers seeking to overturn a statute that may ban the app used by 170 million Americans.

TikTok has frequently denied sharing US user data with China and manipulating video results.

“The government has never provided proof of its assertions, even when Congress passed this unlawful statute. In reaction to the DOJ brief, TikTok wrote on social networking platform X, “Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information.”

The DOJ petition outlines broad national security concerns about ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok.

“China’s long-term geopolitical strategy involves developing and pre-positioning assets that it can deploy at opportune moments,” stated the department’s spokesperson.

In a second declaration, the government stated that it had no evidence that the Chinese government had acquired access to the data of US TikTok users, but that the risk of this happening was too considerable.

“The United States is not required to wait until its foreign adversary takes specific detrimental actions before responding to such a threat,” according to the paperwork.

Presidential election issue

The government also submitted a confidential document with the court outlining additional security concerns about ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok, as well as more general declarations from the FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and DOJ’s National Security Division.

ByteDance informed the US authorities that TikTok’s source code consisted of 2 billion lines of code, making a complete assessment difficult. “Oracle estimated it would take three years to review this body of code,” excluding additional changes, the DOJ stated.

President Joe Biden signed the measure on April 24, giving ByteDance until January 19 to sell TikTok or face a ban. The White House says it wants to end Chinese ownership for national security reasons, but not a ban on TikTok.

The department rejected all of TikTok’s arguments, including that the law violates the First Amendment free speech rights of Americans who use the short video app, claiming that the law addresses national security concerns rather than speech and is aimed at China’s ability to exploit TikTok to gain access to Americans’ sensitive personal data.

The DOJ stated that TikTok users have “numerous other well-known platforms” to choose from, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and X.

The DOJ also stated that TikTok’s proposed $2 billion plan to protect US user data was insufficient, citing US officials’ distrust of ByteDance and the government’s “lack of confidence that it had either the resources or capability to catch violations.”

The appeals court will hear oral arguments on the legal challenge on September 16, pushing the subject of TikTok’s destiny into the last weeks before the November 5 presidential election.

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump joined TikTok and stated in June that he would never support a TikTok ban. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is expected to be the Democratic nominee, joined TikTok this week.

The rule prevents app stores such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google from supplying TikTok, as well as internet hosting providers from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance divests it.

Congress passed the bill handily just weeks after it was introduced, citing concerns among US lawmakers that China may use the app to acquire data on Americans or spy on them.