The US supreme court surprisingly decided, this week, to hear TikTok’s emergency appeal to its imminent ban in the United States. It may be the most important case at the intersection of the first amendment and national security in decades. Whether or not you see China as a nefarious threat, all Americans who care about free expression should worry about the precedent this case could set – and should want the TikTok ban overturned.

After a fifth circuit court of appeals ruling earlier this month, TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, has until 19 January to either sell the popular video-sharing app or face a nationwide ban. The decision stems from Congress passing a law last year that essentially proclaims that if the government says a foreign-owned platform threatens national security, then it can force its sale or censor it.

The US’s core argument is that ByteDance might be handing over user data to the Chinese government. The US government’s briefs are full of redactions that they’ve not yet shared with the public, despite their unprecedented position that an app used by more than half the country should be permanently made illegal. Officials have publicly admitted that the US position is based on speculation about what China could do, not facts about what it actually does.

Now, no one argues that it’s not possible that the Chinese government is accessing user data. As someone who has advocated for privacy for more than a decade, we should be much more aware about the information any app is giving any party. What is often lost in this debate is that TikTok collects similar or the same type of data that every other app on........

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