Photo Credit: Darren Halstead
A U.S. House committee voted to release a Congressional transcript from a classified hearing held in March regarding national security threats posed by TikTok. The transcript was released to the DoJ to support its defense of a law that would require Chinese owner ByteDance to divest from the app.
TikTok is facing a potential ban in the United States if its current ownership does not divest from the app by January 19. ByteDance says it has no intentions of selling off TikTok and has filed a lawsuit against the DoJ seeking to block the law from going into effect. They argue that the law would violate the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans who use the platform.
The closed-door hearing took place in March and focused on perceived threats that TikTok may pose to U.S. national security and user privacy. Digital Music News has documented several privacy violations TikTok has apologized for since 2020—including full access to a user’s clipboard and constantly accessing location information.
The Justice Department asked the Energy and Commerce Committee to review a copy of the transcript that was classified in March to “assist in their litigation,” says Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, committee chair. She adds that lawmakers at the briefing “heard from the intelligence community about the dangers posed by applications, like TikTok, that are controlled by foreign adversaries who are determined to exploit and weaponize Americans’ data.”
The Justice Department declined to comment on the request, with a committee spokesperson saying they have no plans to make the transcript public. Rodgers suggests that ByteDance’s unwillingness to sell-off or divest the app indicates that China is “using these applications in nefarious ways against the American people.”
TikTok has declined to comment on the release of the transcript, but pointed to an earlier statement saying “the process for this legislation was intentionally conducted in secret and rushed through because the bill’s authors knew it was the only way they could push it forward.”
A U.S. court will hear oral arguments for the legal challenges to the case on September 16, while the Justice Department will need to respond to the lawsuits by July 26.
