Montana Prosecutors Ask US Courts To Enforce TikTok Ban Before Applicable

Montana State Attorney General Austin Knudsen, (photo: twitter @AndyVermaut)

JAKARTA - Montana's Attorney General, a Republican, asked a US judge to enforce the country's first ban on the use of TikTok's short video sharing app before taking effect on January 1.

TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance from China, filed a lawsuit last May to hinder the first ban in the US state on the grounds of a violation of the right to free speech by the First Amendment to the company and its users. Separate lawsuits have also been filed by TikTok users in Montana.

Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, said Monday 21 August that the state's legislature and governor "did the right thing by banning TikTok from operating in Montana while under the control of foreign enemies."

Knudsen said in a legal filing that Montana could ban harmful products, and this did not violate the right to free speech.

"If that's not the case, Montana would be powerless to ban the radio that causes cancer just because the radio also sends protected speeches, or bans sporting betting apps just because the apps also share informative videos teaching their users about the complexity of sports gambling," he wrote in a lawsuit on Friday night. "The intended loss prevents cancer, illegal gambling, or data collection by hostile foreign countries is basically non-expressive."

Sidang mengenai permintaan TikTok untuk injunsi sementara dijadwalkan pada 12 Oktober.

TikTok, used by more than 150 million Americans, has faced growing pressure from US lawmakers for national bans over concerns about the Chinese government's possible influence.

TikTok, which made no comments on Monday, said it "never and will never share US user data with the Chinese government, and has taken substantial steps to protect the privacy and security of TikTok users."

Montana can impose a fine of 10,000 US dollars (Rp150 million) for any violation by TikTok. The law does not impose sanctions on individual TikTok users.

TikTok estimates that 380,000 people in Montana are using the video service, or more than a third of the state's 1.1 million population.

The president at the time, Donald Trump, in 2020 sought to ban new TikTok downloads and other applications owned by China, WeChat, a Tencent unit, but a series of court decisions hindered the implementation of the ban. Some in Congress wanted to strengthen Biden's administrative legal tools to ban TikTok, but those attempts have stalled.

"The position that appears to be held by TikTok is that no one can manage them by anyone," Knudsen wrote.

The American Civil Freedom Unit this month called the ban on TikTok unconstitutional and "direct restrictions on protected expressions and associations."