MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
TikTok had its day in front of the Supreme Court today. Because of the law that Congress passed last year, the viral video app could be banned in nine days unless the high court intervenes. Arguing on behalf of the U.S. government, the Justice Department said if TikTok does not cut its ties to China, then shutting down the app will be necessary to protect national security. NPR's Bobby Allyn was in the courtroom today. He is in our studio right now. Hi, Bobby.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: OK, start with lawyers for TikTok. What did they argue to the Supreme Court?
ALLYN: You know, they painted a dire picture. They said the app will go dark a week from Sunday unless the Supreme Court steps in. Now, this could affect 170 million people - that's half of the U.S. population - that use TikTok every day. And in their bid to keep TikTok alive, the company's legal team argued that its algorithm, which curates content, is actually a type of protected speech. So TikTok's U.S. operation is having its speech rights infringed by this law. TikTok says so, too, are the millions of creators who would be silenced by this ban.
KELLY: Now, we already nodded to what TikTok's problem has been all through this. It's China, in a word, because TikTok's parent company is based there. How did TikTok address that in court?
ALLYN: Yeah. They did it in a pretty outlandish way. TikTok's lawyer made this comparison. What if China had influence over a newspaper, say The Washington Post? TikTok's lawyer, Noel Francisco, said, imagine if China kidnapped Post owner Jeff Bezos' kids and demanded to control the paper's front-page stories. Would Congress shut down the Post then?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NOEL FRANCISCO: I still don't think that Congress could come in and tell Bezos, either sell the Post or shut it down, because that would violate Bezos' rights and The Washington Post's rights.
ALLYN: Likewise, Francisco says the same applies to TikTok, and he asked the court to block the law or at least pause the start date.
KELLY: Bobby, I'm racing to imagine how Justice Department lawyers would have responded to that. How did they respond?
ALLYN: Yeah. The Justice Department said the law Congress passed was intended to remove China's ability to get Americans' data, and the law did this by requiring TikTok to just fully cut ties with China or be shut down. The Justice Department's position was China is an enemy of the United States, not just any foreign country we're talking about here. China has a voracious appetite for Americans' data and wants to sow chaos in the U.S., they said. And TikTok could be used to pursue those interests. Here's how solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar explained why ByteDance needs to be severed from TikTok.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELIZABETH PRELOGAR: It's like patching up a backdoor vulnerability that the PRC has that we can't totally see around all the corners to imagine how it could use it against our interests.
ALLYN: PRC, of course, being the People's Republic of China.
KELLY: Right. OK, so the Supreme Court justices who were listening along to all this - how did they react?
ALLYN: All the justices appeared pretty skeptical that TikTok's free speech rights are more important than oversea threats. Some worried that TikTok could collect personal information on teenage users who, as adults, might work in the military or the federal government. Then the information can be used against them as blackmail. Other justices voiced concerns about China pushing propaganda on the app. This is how Chief Justice John Roberts responded to TikTok's legal team, drawing a distinction between TikTok's U.S. operations and its parent company in China.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN ROBERTS: It seems to me that you're ignoring the major concern here of Congress, which was Chinese manipulation of the content and acquisition and harvesting of the content.
KELLY: OK. So, Bobby, what happens now?
ALLYN: So we're waiting to hear if the court is going to delay the ban's start date and then also when it will rule on the merits, which will be in the coming days. And, of course, there was President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to save TikTok, and that might throw another wrench into this situation. It all, Mary Louise, might just come down to the wire.
KELLY: NPR's Bobby Allyn. Thank you.
ALLYN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
