The US Department of Justice yesterday asked a federal judge in San Francisco to allow the government to bar Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google from offering WeChat for download in US app stores pending an appeal.
The filing asked US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler to put on hold her preliminary injunction issued last Saturday. That injunction blocked the US Department of Commerce order which was set to take effect at the beginning of this week and that would also bar other US transactions with Tencent Holding Ltd’s (騰訊) WeChat, potentially making the app unusable in the US.
The justice department filing said that 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.”
Photo: Reuters
Tencent had put forward a “mitigation proposal” that sought to create a new US version of the app; deploy specific security measures to protect the new app’s source code; partner with a US cloud provider for user data storage; and manage the new app through a US-based entity, the filing said.
However, its proposal still allowed Tencent to retain ownership of WeChat and did not address US concerns over the company, it added.
Tencent declined to comment.
The US 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 US persons, which is accessible to Tencent and stored in data centers in China and Canada,” the memo said.
Beeler said that WeChat users who filed a lawsuit “have shown serious questions going to the merits of the First Amendment claim.”
The justice department filing said that “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 US national security at risk.”
WeChat has an average of 19 million daily active users in the US, analytics firms Apptopia said early last month. It is popular among Chinese students, Americans living in China and Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.
Beeler wrote that “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 US users addresses those concerns.”
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
RSS