Attorneys at Cooper & Kirk joined Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita on Tuesday in his ongoing fight to hold TikTok accountable for collecting personal data from app users – information that is then accessible to the Chinese Communist Party.
Rokita
The Office of the Indiana Attorney General filed an amended lawsuit against TikTok on Tuesday.
“The district court’s criticisms of the initial complaint were misguided and unfounded,” said David Thompson of Cooper & Kirk, the state’s lead outside counsel. “Is it considered ‘irrelevant posturing’ to express concern that Americans may be unknowingly posing for CCP facial recognition files?”
“Even journalists at left-leaning CNN have now accepted the credibility of testimony ‘that the Chinese Communist Party accessed the data of TikTok users on a broad scale, and for political purposes.’” AG Rokita said. “Recent sworn testimony from a former employee of ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, reveals the depths of their deception.”
Such testimony provides just one example of TikTok’s practices – despite the company sparing no expense to deny it to Congress, the media, and American consumers.
“TikTok has engaged in a massive PR campaign in which their statements and omissions paint a false, deceptive and misleading picture for Indiana consumers that there is minimal risk of the Chinese government accessing and exploiting their data,” Thompson added.
In December 2022, AG Rokita led the way by filing two separate lawsuits against TikTok – both related to false claims made by the company about its video-sharing app. This week, he amended the state’s data-privacy complaint against TikTok to reflect the recent revelations that TikTok users’ data is subject to Chinese law and may be intercepted by the Chinese government.
Previously, TikTok removed the state’s case to federal court, but on May 23 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana agreed with AG Rokita’s office that the case should proceed in state court. The district court criticized the complaint as “posturing.”
“Not only do TikTok’s false, deceptive and misleading practices blatantly violate Indiana law – but they also endanger individual Hoosiers,” AG Rokita said. “Too many U.S. policymakers put their heads in the sand while the Chinese Communist Party steals data and uses it to advance its own strategic agenda.”