TikTok, the popular video app facing a new law that could lead to it being banned in the United States, released details Thursday about numerous confidential meetings with top federal officials as it sought to address concerns about the company's Chinese ownership.
The details of those interactions, TikTok said in a court filing, show that the federal government “ceased substantial engagement” with the company in its efforts in September 2022.
The company said the details support its argument, first made in its lawsuit to block the law in May, that the law is effectively a ban because U.S. officials knew the Chinese government would not allow a forced sale of TikTok or the recommendation algorithm. that powers the application. TikTok said a ban would violate the First Amendment.
The new documents include a 90-page proposal from TikTok on how it plans to address concerns among U.S. national security officials about the app, including concerns that the Chinese government could use it to spread propaganda or collect sensitive user data. The Biden administration never approved TikTok's proposal, known as Project Texas, despite many exchanges with the company about it.
TikTok also published a letter containing the dates and details of several meetings the company held last year with members of a secret panel known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.
The company shared details of a one-page document outlining “key national security concerns” that the Justice Department provided to members of Congress in March. The company said it focused on hypotheses and did not address TikTok's security proposal.
The new law was signed by President Biden in April following rapid and overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. It requires TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a government-approved non-Chinese buyer by mid-January. If that doesn't happen, the app could be banned in the United States.
The law could alter the future of an application that has 170 million users in the United States and that touches virtually every aspect of American life.
TikTok sued the government in May, setting off a legal fight that many legal experts say could end up in the Supreme Court. The government is expected to provide supporting material for his case by July 26. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for September 16.
The US government has shared its most serious national security concerns related to TikTok behind closed doors, including classified briefings with members of Congress.
The company has argued that it has offered extraordinary commitments to the US government to address its concerns, including third-party monitoring of TikTok content and a “shutdown option” if the company violated the terms of a security agreement. .
The filing sheds new light on TikTok's conversations with CFIUS, a group of federal agencies that reviews investments by foreign entities in U.S. companies. Those interactions have been largely shrouded in secrecy for the past two years.
Before the law was passed, TikTok was in limbo as the panel weighed whether to approve its security plan.
The documents show that lawyers for TikTok and the Biden administration argued over the viability of a sale and whether the company could move its underlying coding from China as early as at least March 2023. A couple of months later, the company said, it gave a presentation at the Treasury Department that noted “that the positions of the US government and the Chinese government were flatly incompatible, placing the company in an impossible position.”
The documents suggest that the last in-person meeting between TikTok and CFIUS was in September. It included “another technical discussion” about the challenges of moving the underlying coding from China. The company said it had heard little from management after that.
Lawyers for TikTok wrote to a Justice Department official after the new law was introduced in March, saying the company feared that “CFIUS has been compromised by political demagoguery in this matter.”
The Justice Department said in a statement that it looked forward to defending the legislation, which it said “addresses critical national security concerns in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations.”
“Along with others in our intelligence community and in Congress, the Department of Justice has consistently warned about the threat of autocratic nations that can weaponize technology, such as the apps and software that run on our phones, for use. against us,” the statement says. “This threat is compounded when these autocratic nations demand that companies under their control secretly hand over sensitive data to the government.”
