US Department of Justice Appeals Decision Protecting TikTok from Ban

The Justice Department of the United States said it has appealed an October 3rd decision of a Pennsylvania judge, restraining the U.S. government from placing a ban, planned to kick in on Thursday, on video-sharing app TikTok.

The directive of the Commerce Department would have forbidden dealings with the app, an order its owner ByteDance said would put a stopper on TikTok’s use in the country.

The government took no instant steps to implement the order, much as it the possibility of acceding to a demand by ByteDance to stretch the deadline further was not obvious.

The Commerce Department will adhere to Justice Wendy Beetlestone’s order stopping the bar but would “vigorously defend” its actions, it said on November 1.

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Beetlestone urged the agency from putting a stopper of data hosting in the U.S. for TikTok, content delivery services, and transactions of technical nature.

The Trump Administration says the app constitutes a national security risk, considering that personal data collected on 100 million Americans using the app might be obtained by the Chinese government. TikTok has refuted the allegations.

Beetlestone wrote the “government’s own descriptions of the national security threat posed by the TikTok app are phrased in the hypothetical.”

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Washington-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols issued a preliminary in a suit filed by ByteDance that blocked Commerce from directing Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google app stores to remove TikTok download by users.

The U.S. Treasury Department disclosed on Wednesday it desired a resolution of national security issues it had raised about TikTok before a divestiture on Thursday.

Byte had been in negotiation with Walmart and Oracle Corp to transfer TikTok’s assets in the United States into a new entity to be called TikTok Global.