Judge Blocked US Attempt To Ban Wechat

The US attempts to ban WeChat, a Chinese payment and messaging application, have been blocked by the United States Judge Laurel Beeler. According to the Magistrate Judge, the US attempt to ban WeChat will consequently raise several questions regarding the first amendment of the constitution, which is guarantee regarding freedom of speech in the country.

Trump administration has ruled to shut down the Chinese application WeChat across the United States as it is a viable threat to the national security of the country. The Department of Commerce as issued a bar in the messaging application to appear in the app stores across the United States from Sunday to effectively block the application from being accessed. The US attempts to ban WeChat inside the country has been made as the Chinese application manufacturing company could possibly provide private data of its users to the government of China.

All alleged claims of passing sensitive information to the Chinese government have been denied by both China and WeChat manufacturers. The parent company of WeChat, Tencent, has previously described the ban on Chinese applications across the United States as a series of unfortunate events. The US attempts to ban WeChat was blocked, as the ruling was made after Chinese video-sharing application TikTok made a deal with the US firms Walmart and Oracle to continue their workings of US operations of TikTok.

The application was in the name list to be shut done by the Department of Commerce by September 10, if the Chinese firm is unable to handle its operations inside the United States to a US-based corporation.

Declining of US attempt to ban WeChat

The case was presented in a US court regarding US attempt to ban WeChat after some of the WeChat users residing in the United States challenged the executive order presented by the Trump administration to shut down WeChat inside the country. The Department of Justice argued that if the direct order by President Trump is blocked, it could consequently irritate the President and displace His determination regarding the handling of national security threats against the country.

The Judge for the case blocked the US attempt to ban WeChat, as it was noted that while the generalized evidence in this case is viable regarding the threat to national security by China, which is related to mobile technology, but the specified evidence against WeChat is not substantial to completely shut down the application in the country.

Reason for shutdown of WeChat in the US

The reason behind continuous US attempt to ban WeChat and other Chinese applications in the country is due to combat against the malicious collection of personal information of the citizens of America, but all claims have been denied by China and the application manufacturers. According to the Commerce Department, WeChat has collected numerous amounts of data from its users, which also includes location, search history, browsing data, and network activity.

The US attempt to ban WeChat has been rapid as it is believed by the Commerce Department that the Chinese Communist Party could possibly use the private personal data of its American users. This is because the political party has already demonstrated the motive and means to use these applications to their advantage and threaten the economy, foreign policy, and national security of the United States. While Tencent, the parent company of WeChat stated that all messages done, on its mobile application are private and confidential.

Like all Chinese social media applications, WeChat has also initiated censoring of private messages that contain certain keywords. Since January 1, WeChat has begun censoring all private chats that contain the word coronavirus outbreak. Due to this, the US attempt to ban WeChat in the country, as this proves that data provide on this platform might not be private as the company claims.

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