Comment by alberth
13 hours ago
This is being positioned as a national security issue that a foreign government has so much influence over the US public (and data on people if they want, like geolocation, interests, your contacts, etc).
Note: I'm not saying I either agree or disagree ... just pointing out the dynamics in the case being made.
Legally, the national security component is relatively minor to the case. It's played up to be the justification for the law but SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct.
> The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a National Security Concern.
FTA
SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct
They do, and they did. From the ruling:
The Act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adver- sary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This ob- jective qualifies as an important Government interest un- der intermediate scrutiny.
My point was that SCOTUS didn't review whether there was a compelling national security interest or not – they didn't review any of the classified material, etc. SCOTUS didn't consider whether or not it was good or meaningful policy, they simply accepted the national security argument which more-or-less required them to uphold the DC court's application of intermediate scrutiny.