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The
filing asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler to put on hold
her preliminary injunction issued Saturday. That injunction
blocked the U.S. Commerce Department order which was set to take
effect late on Sept. 20 and that would also bar other U.S.
transactions with Tencent Holding's <0700.HK> WeChat,
potentially making the app unusable in the United States.
The Justice Department filing said Beeler's order was in error
and "permits the continued, unfettered use of WeChat, a mobile
application that the Executive Branch has determined constitutes
a threat to the national security and foreign policy of the
United States."
Tencent had put forward a "mitigation proposal" that sought to
create a new U.S. version of the app, deploy specific security
measures to protect the new apps source code, partner with a
U.S. cloud provider for user data storage, and manage the new
app through a U.S.-based entity, the filing said.
However, its proposal still allowed Tencent to retain ownership
of WeChat and did not address U.S. concerns over the company, it
added.
Tencent declined to comment.
The U.S. WeChat Users Alliance, the group behind the legal
challenge to the WeChat ban, did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
In support of its argument, the Justice Department made public
portions of a Sept. 17 Commerce Department memo outlining the
WeChat transactions to be banned. "The WeChat mobile application
collects and transmits sensitive personal information on U.S.
persons, which is accessible to Tencent and stored in data
centers in China and Canada," the memo said.
Beeler said WeChat users who filed a lawsuit "have shown serious
questions going to the merits of the First Amendment claim."
The Justice Department filing said "the First Amendment does not
bar regulation of WeChat simply because it has achieved the
popularity and dependency sought by (China), precisely so it can
surveil users, promote its propaganda, and otherwise place U.S.
national security at risk."
The government sought an expedited ruling from Beeler no later
than Oct. 1 on its request to stay her order pending appeal.
WeChat has had an average of 19 million daily active users in
the United States, analytics firms Apptopia said in early
August. It is popular among Chinese students, Americans living
in China and some Americans who have personal or business
relationships in China.
Beeler wrote "certainly the government’s over-arching
national-security interest is significant. But on this record —
while the government has established that China’s activities
raise significant national security concerns — it has put in
scant little evidence that its effective ban of WeChat for all
U.S. users addresses those concerns."
WeChat is an all-in-one mobile app that combines services
similar to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Venmo. The app is
an essential part of daily life for many in China and boasts
more than 1 billion users.
TikTok on Wednesday sought a similar preliminary injunction from
a U.S. judge in Washington who gave the government until Friday
at 2:30 p.m. to respond to the request or delay the U.S. app
store ban on new TikTok downloads that is set to take effect
late on Sunday.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Pei Li
in Hong Kong; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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