TikTok sues Montana over app banning law: NPR

TikTok sued the state of Montana on Monday after the governor signed a law there that would effectively ban the popular social media app in the state.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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Drew Angerer/Getty Images

TikTok sued the state of Montana on Monday after the governor signed a law there that would effectively ban the popular social media app in the state.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

TikTok has filed a federal lawsuit against Montana after the state passed legislation last week to ban downloading of the app within its borders.

The widely anticipated lawsuit argues that banning a hugely popular social media app amounts to an unlawful suppression of free speech amounting to censorship.

The Montana law “unlawfully restricts one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment,” the lawsuit claims.

Lawyers for Chinese companies TikTok also argues that the national security threat raised by Montana officials is not something state officials can attempt to regulate, as foreign affairs and national security matters are a federal matter.

The lawsuit seeks to strike down Montana’s law, which has not yet come into effect.

TikTok is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. The company claims to have 150 million users in the United States

“We challenge Montana’s unconstitutional ban on TikTok to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of TikTok users in Montana,” TikTok said in a statement. “We believe our legal challenge will prevail based on an extremely strong body of precedent and facts.”

The lawsuit calls Montana’s concerns that Chinese authorities could access Americans’ data and subject minors to harmful content without merit.

“The state enacted these extraordinary and unprecedented measures based on nothing more than unfounded speculation,” according to the lawsuit.

TikTok launched what it calls Project Texas in response to theoretical concerns about the Chinese government’s potential use of the app to harvest data on Americans, and even spy on American citizens. The $1.5 billion data security plan, created in conjunction with Austin-based software company Oracle, would keep Americans’ data stored on US servers and overseen by a US team, TikTok says.

Most national security experts agree that concern about TikTok’s ties to China is warranted.

Under China’s national intelligence laws, any organization in the country must provide data to the government upon request, including personal information about a company’s customers. And since ByteDance owns TikTok, it’s likely the video-sharing app would abide by those rules if the Chinese government were to seek information on US citizens.

Yet the fears so far remain hypothetical. There are no publicly available examples of the Chinese government attempting to use TikTok as a spying or data-gathering tool.

TikTok has admitted that some China-based employees have used the app to track US journalists who have reported company leaks. Those employees have been laid off, the company said, and TikTok officials say its new data security plan would prevent such a scenario from happening in the future.

In Montana, the law signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte has been criticized by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and digital rights groups, who argue the law infringes on free speech rights. Americans.

Cybersecurity experts said implementing the law would be difficult.

The law charges companies like Apple and Google, which control app stores, fees of up to $10,000 a day to allow TikTok to be downloaded in the state of Montana.

But experts say such a ban would be riddled with loopholes and would affect even residents who live outside of Montana and reside near the state border.

The Montana law is expected to go into effect in January 2024.