A US federal judge has approved a request from a group of US WeChat users to delay looming federal government restrictions that could effectively make the popular app nearly impossible to use in the US.
In a ruling dated on Saturday, Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said that the government’s actions would affect users’ First Amendment rights, as an effective ban on the app would remove their platform for communication.
WeChat is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent.
The group of WeChat users requested an injunction after the US Department of Commerce on Friday said that it would bar WeChat from US app stores and keep it from accessing essential Internet services in the country beginning on Sunday at 11:59pm.
They argued that the prohibitions would violate the free-speech rights of millions of Chinese-speaking Americans who rely on it.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted WeChat and another app, TikTok, which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, for national security and data privacy concerns.
The administration contends that the data of US users collected by the two apps could be shared with the Chinese government.
On Saturday, Trump said that he supported a proposed deal that would have TikTok partner with Oracle and WalMart to form a US company.
There is still a chance that TikTok could be banned in the US as of Nov. 12 if the deal is not completed, under the restrictions put in place by the US Department of Commerce.
However, a restriction to bar TikTok from app stores in the US, similar to what WeChat faced, was pushed back a week to Sunday after Trump backed the latest TikTok deal.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday told Fox News that the government would ensure that under the TikTok-Oracle-WalMart deal, no American’s data would end up in the possession of the Chinese government.
In the WeChat case, the users said that the moves targeting the all-in-one app with instant-messaging, social media and other communication tools would restrict free speech.
WeChat “serves as a virtual public square for the Chinese-speaking and Chinese-American community in the United States and is [as a practical matter] their only means of communication,” Beeler wrote in the ruling, dated Saturday and released early on Sunday.
Effectively banning it “forecloses meaningful access to communication in their community and thereby operates as a prior restraint on their right to free speech,” she wrote.
“Certainly the government’s overarching national-security interest is significant,” she wrote. “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,” she wrote.
The US government earlier said that it would not be restricting free speech because WeChat users still “are free to speak on alternative platforms that do not pose a national security threat.”
The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the injunction.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not