Washington, United States:
President Joe Biden’s administration has asked a US federal court to pause proceedings aimed at banning TikTok to permit for a fresh evaluation of the national safety threat from the well known Chinese-owned video app.
The filing in a federal appeals court stated the new administration had begun a evaluation and would not for the moment press for a ban of the mobile app as sought by former president Donald Trump.
The filing stated the Commerce Department “plans to conduct an evaluation of the underlying record justifying those prohibitions” sought by the prior administration of Donald Trump, which claimed TikTok posed a national safety threat due to the fact of its hyperlinks to the Chinese government.
After the new evaluation, the administration “will then be better positioned to determine whether the national security threat” from TikTok.
“The Department of Commerce remains committed to a robust defense of national security as well as ensuring the viability of our economy and preserving individual rights and data privacy,” the filing stated.
The Trump administration move to ban downloads of TikTok and its presence on on line networks had been stalled amid legal challenges.
In a connected improvement, the Wall Street Journal reported the Biden administration has also place on hold a strategy to force the sale of TikTok to American investors.
The Journal, citing unnamed sources, stated the Biden White House had indefinitely shelved the strategy to demand the sale of TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, to US tech giant Oracle with Walmart as a companion.
The Journal stated the new administration is in the midst of a evaluation of information safety and strategies to avoid the info TikTok collects on American customers from getting accessed by the Chinese government, but that there would be no imminent move to force the sale.
The White House did not straight address the report, but spokeswoman Jen Psaki stated: “It’s not accurate to suggest that there is a new proactive step by the Biden White House.”
Psaki added that there is a “rigorous” evaluation of information safety of TikTok by an interagency government panel, with no timetable set.
“I will note broadly speaking that we are comprehensively evaluating the risks… to US data including from TikTok and will address them in a decisive and effective fashion,” she stated.
TikTok, the wildly well known app with an estimated one hundred million US customers, has repeatedly defended itself against allegations of information transfers to the Chinese government, saying it retailers user info on servers in the United States and Singapore.
A tentative deal unveiled by the Trump administration would make Silicon Valley giant Oracle the technologies companion for TikTok and a stakeholder in a new entity to be recognized as TikTok Global.