The Supreme Court should ban TikTok. It's a national security threat. | Opinion

One of the first cases the Supreme Court will hear in 2025 is a challenge to the TikTok ban scheduled to go into effect next month.

Congress passed a law, signed by President Joe Biden, that would ban the platform unless it is sold to an American company by Jan. 19, with a potential 90-day extension on that deadline.

Oral arguments will be on Jan. 10, and the Supreme Court will weigh whether the ban violates the First Amendment rights of Americans. The justices could delay the ban until later in the year, once they are able to issue a full decision on the merits.

Despite my views favoring free speech, the Supreme Court should uphold the ban, and TikTok should be banned or at least be forced to sell.

TikTok poses a national threat because of China

There are two avenues through which a compelling argument can be made against TikTok. The first and more direct issue is that the Chinese government, in all likelihood, has a direct line of access to data that TikTok collects on Americans.

The nightmare case is that the Chinese government is directly accessing the data of the 150 million Americans who use TikTok. This data includes name, age, location, direct messages, keystrokes, file names on your device, IP address, biometric data and more. This level of data collection about a direct adversary could prove invaluable to China if that government wants to weaken the United States.

The libertarian in me would be remiss if I didn't mention this is the exact kind of data that Facebook, Google and Snapchat collect on Americans themselves, though the issue here is that of a foreign adversary holding such data.

Even without direct access to that data, the Chinese government has the ability to force TikTok to turn over any data it deems necessary. TikTok has said this is not the case, claiming that U.S. data is stored separately from any that is subject to Chinese law.

However, there is testimony from TikTok employees to refute these claims, and that data is sometimes shared with ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company, outside of official channels.

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The second, related issue is that of content manipulation. TikTok and other social media platforms are terrifyingly good at knowing what you want to see, and they do so by collecting in-depth data on what you do and don’t like. For the most part, this information is harmless.

However, en masse, the data gives impressive trendlines on the American public that can be manipulated in any number of ways. Scarier yet is determining what Americans want to see. Skewing the types of content that are being shown, such as boosting pro-socialist content to young Americans, is within the realm of capabilities for the Chinese government with the level of control they have over ByteDance.

Once again, parallels can be drawn to Big Tech in America, but the threat here is that it is being done by a foreign adversary.

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Is TikTok being banned? Supreme Court will ultimately decide.

These are political arguments against a ban, and the job of the Supreme Court is to determine what the law says, not what it ought to be.

From a legal standpoint, TikTok’s challenge to the ban seems relatively weak. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which most recently heard this case, sided against TikTok. Despite noting the First Amendment considerations that are important in this case, the judges (who come from across the ideological spectrum) each concluded that a ban was permissible on national security grounds.

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act "was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents,” wrote Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg in the majority opinion. “It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by" the People's Republic of China.

Another view: US wants to ban TikTok, but First Amendment demands stronger case on national security

The ban does violate a free speech interest, but that is not the purpose of the forced sale/ban of TikTok. The government offered alternatives to an outright ban, giving TikTok time to continue operating while they found a suitable buyer for the platform.

The motive of the legislation is not to limit speech, but rather to protect Americans from data privacy violations by China. The national security risk outweighs the free speech considerations for TikTok’s users, especially when there are viable alternative platforms on the market. Instagram has already taken a significant market share away from TikTok.

Banning TikTok is a matter of national security, not one of violating free speech, and the justices should treat it as such.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Will TikTok be banned? Supreme Court must protect our data | Opinion