Legal expert says TikTok ban is unconstitutional and unsupported by evidence

Shortly after Biden signed the bill, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew released one Video He urged viewers to “rest assured, we’re not going anywhere,” adding that he was confident TikTok would win in a legal challenge. ByteDance said Thursday on Toutiao, a Chinese social media service it owns, that it “has no plans to sell TikTok.”

The latest law comes after years Try to ban the extremely popular short video platform, including from former President Trumpdue to national security concerns. However, a digital law expert said that is the case within the US no evidence presented to support his claims and considers the ban to be unconstitutional.

Why the ban is unconstitutional

The laws requires TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance to sell a majority of the corporate inside nine months, with an extra three months possible if a sale is planned. If this isn’t the case, the app can be blocked. But Legal challenges loom The timeframe could extend for years.

According to Anupam Chander, a TikTok ban isn’t only a serious nuisance for America’s 170 million users, but is also considered unconstitutional and a violation of the free speech of each users and the platform’s owner Professor of worldwide regulation of recent technologies at Georgetown University.

That’s because “the clear interference with free speech is not justified on national security grounds,” he told Fortune. While the US has claimed that China will use the app to observe Americans and blamed TikTok for it cultivate propagandaHe said the federal government had provided no public evidence of this.

In court, much of the controversy will likely deal with whether the ban would violate Americans’ and TikTok’s First Amendment rights, Chander said. As a Chinese company based within the U.S., he explained, TikTok has the identical rights as a U.S. person “and certainly constitutional rights.”

TikTok will likely argue that its right to public communication is affected by this law, as if the US government had mandated latest ownership of it New York Times, he added. It is also argued that the law constitutes “viewpoint discrimination” by targeting their specific views, which Chander says is especially problematic under the First Amendment and frowned upon by courts.

Other privacy solutions

Alternative mechanisms, equivalent to making a national standard for privacy laws that apply to all corporations operating within the U.S., could higher protect Americans, he suggested.

While it’s unimaginable to stay completely free from the risks of foreign surveillance on the Internet, Chander said a national standard for privacy regulations would help minimize the danger of breaches that exist on the Internet several American corporations, in a broader sense. However, drafting and passing such a law could be complicated.

“It’s much easier politically to pass a law targeting TikTok than a privacy law,” he quipped.

The lack of a national standard in data protection laws has led to this caused considerable concern from different sectors, but there isn’t any consensus on whether it needs to be kind of strict, noted Chander.

Without a national standard, ensuring consent online becomes cumbersome as web sites must be sure that each user consents to the sharing of knowledge about cookies and promoting. But each state has different rules, complicating efforts to design platforms with interstate audiences, equivalent to news publishers, he identified.

California has passed laws like this Consumer Protection Act 2018, giving consumers more control over the non-public data corporations collect from them. And since then the state has passed away Suggestions giving consumers the fitting to correct inaccurate personal information that an organization has about them, in addition to the fitting to limit the use and disclosure of that information.

Ripple effects on Elon Musk’s X?

If there’s a ban on TikTok within the United States, it could function a model in other parts of the world, particularly in countries which have criticized American apps for violating their national laws, Chander warned. Governments could claim that the US now recognizes the “dangers of foreign apps” and demand their very own by mandating ownership of American apps.

He cited Brazil’s Supreme Court as a possible example is investigating Elon Musk for spreading fake news on his social platform X in addition to for alleged obstruction and criminal organization. If the Brazilian judge orders a ban on X, “he could cite this TikTok law as support.”