Justice Department Appeals Injunction Against WeChat
October 02 2020 - 3:04PM
Dow Jones News
By Katy Stech Ferek
WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration filed court papers Friday
seeking to overturn a federal magistrate's Sept. 20 ruling that
stopped a U.S. ban on China's ubiquitous messaging and e-commerce
app WeChat.
The federal government asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
to review U.S. Magistrate Laurel Beeler's ruling in favor of a
WeChat users group, which contended that the ban violates
free-speech protections.
President Trump ordered the ban, saying WeChat poses a
national-security risk because data gathered on the app could be
shared with China's authoritarian government.
But Judge Beeler, who serves on the U.S. District Court in San
Francisco, said the government hadn't provided enough evidence
about its national-security concerns to warrant an immediate U.S.
ban on the app, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent
Holdings Ltd.
The appeal filed by Justice Department lawyers Friday didn't lay
out their grounds for overturning the ruling.
But in the days since the ruling, they filed with the court
additional details about their national-security concerns about the
Chinese government's potential collection of data on American users
of the app and asked Judge Beeler to reconsider her earlier ruling
after reviewing the new details.
In that Sept. 24 reconsideration request, Justice Department
lawyers offered Judge Beeler new documents they say back up
national-security concerns, including two U.S. reports that they
say detail the Chinese government's espionage operations against
the U.S., its influence over companies such as Tencent and a
Chinese legal requirement that private companies play a role in
gathering intelligence and surveillance.
Tencent has said it disagrees with the federal government's
security concerns, saying it "incorporates the highest standards of
user privacy and data security."
Judge Beeler set an Oct. 15 hearing to go over that
reconsideration request, which is separate from the appeal filed
Friday.
Her ruling was one of two recent court decisions that have
stalled the Trump administration's effort to crack down on
Chinese-owned apps over security and privacy concerns.
On Sept. 27, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., put a hold on
proposed restrictions on popular video-sharing app TikTok, which is
owned by China's ByteDance Ltd. but would become a U.S.-based
company under a proposed deal with Oracle Corp. and Walmart
Inc.
The TikTok deal, which would institute data-security safeguards
for TikTok users, is now being reviewed by U.S. national-security
officials.
Write to Katy Stech Ferek at katherine.stech@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 02, 2020 14:49 ET (18:49 GMT)
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