Ian Patrick, FISM News
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocked a Trump administration order set to bar Apple and Google from offering TikTok for download at 11:59 p.m. on September 27. He declined “at this time” to block restrictions set to take effect on Nov. 12 on technical and business arrangements which are crucial for the app to function properly.
The Commerce Department said in a statement it “will comply with the injunction and has taken immediate steps to do so.” The statement, which defended the TikTok order and Trump’s executive order demanding owner ByteDance divest its TikTok U.S. operations, did not specify whether the government would appeal.
TikTok said it was pleased with the injunction and added it would maintain its “ongoing dialogue with the government to turn our proposal, which the president gave his preliminary approval to last week, into an agreement.” Representatives for Chinese state media also welcomed the ruling.
Trump’s administration contends that TikTok poses national security concerns as personal data collected on 100 million Americans who use the app could be obtained by China’s government. Any deal will also still need to be reviewed by the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The Justice Department said a preliminary injunction would be “interfering with a formal national security judgment of the president; altering the landscape with respect to ongoing CFIUS negotiations; and continuing to allow sensitive and valuable user information to flow to ByteDance with respect to all new users.”
Sourced from Reuters America Wire and edited for brevity