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.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$10.26 billion to finance the construction of its second fab in Kumamoto, Japan, and a second fab in Arizona, using advanced process technologies. The Department of Investment Review approved TSMC’s investment applications on the basis that Taiwan remains a major technology and manufacturing hub for the chipmaker, which makes its most advanced chips at home, the company operates its research-and-development center here and the majority of its capacity remains in Taiwan. The latest capital injections — US$5.26 billion for its Japanese venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
DIVERSIFYING: Following customers’ demand to improve supply chain resilience, ASE is looking for sites in the US, Japan and Mexico, a company executive said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it plans to launch a new high-end chip testing fab in the US next month to better serve its key customers based in North America, particularly California-based artificial intelligence (AI) customers. The new US testing facility would be operated by the firm’s subsidiary ISE Labs Inc, it said. ASE’s major customers, and high-ranking US officials and representatives from American Institute in Taiwan are to attend the fab’s opening ceremony on July 12, it said. ISE Labs last year acquired a 5,942m2 facility in San
Local companies believe that nearly a third of all job opportunities will vanish in 10 years due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a survey released by online job bank yes123 on Tuesday. In the survey of 1,016 companies on the labor market’s third quarter outlook, the job bank focused in part on AI’s impact on workers and asked companies what percentage of jobs they felt would be lost to AI’s round-the-clock productivity and high-speed computing prowess. Respondents felt on average that 29.2 percent of job opportunities would be lost to AI over the next 10 years, but there
Taiwanese workers earned an average of NT$47,000 per month this year, but 40 percent are struggling financially and 18 percent plan to switch jobs within 12 months, two separate surveys showed yesterday. The amount equals a 5.4 percent increase from a year earlier to a decade high, 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said. The government is due to review the nation’s minimum wages. Employees at computer and consumer electronics manufacturers reported the highest average monthly wage of NT$60,000 a month, followed by semiconductor firms at NT$59,000, and vendors of shoe and textile products, along with software and Internet businesses at NT$55,000, 104 Job