New York (AFP)

Latest episode in the saga on the fate of TikTok and WeChat applications in the United States: the restrictions which were to prevent the normal use of WeChat, from the Chinese group Tencent from Sunday, have been temporarily suspended by a judge.

The Commerce Department announced on Friday that it would ban downloading one of China's most popular applications in the name of national security.

He also banned the use of the application, used by some 19 million users on American soil for messaging, purchases, payments and other services, for any financial transfer and prevented any technical support service. at WeChat.

Basically, "even if it was technically available to Americans having already downloaded it, the application would probably have been useless to them", summarized the judge Laurel Beeler in a decision consulted by AFP.

The restrictions had been challenged in court by a group of users, who claimed that they strongly affected both professional and personal relationships within the Chinese-speaking community in the United States.

Many WeChat users worried that they could no longer communicate with their loved ones on both sides of the Pacific.

The plaintiffs demonstrated that the Commerce Department's decision raised "serious questions" about compliance with the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression, the judge said.

"WeChat is in fact the only means of communication for many members of the community, not only because China bans other applications, but also because Chinese speakers with limited fluency in English do not other choice than WeChat, ”she said.

The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to AFP's requests on what it planned to do.

- Agreement for TikTok -

The download ban announced on Friday also affected the popular TikTok short video app, used by 100 million people in the United States.

But the latter was postponed Saturday evening to September 27 as TikTok reached an agreement on the management of its activities in the United States with Oracle and Walmart having received the green light from the American president.

Donald Trump has been claiming for weeks, without having made public any evidence, that TikTok spies on behalf of Beijing and he had given his China-based parent company, ByteDance, until Sunday to cede TikTok's activities on the American soil to a "made in USA" company.

The deal announced on Saturday has yet to be finalized by the companies involved and approved by a US government national security committee.

The Commerce Department justified its decision on Friday by saying that "the Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated that it has the means and the intention to use these applications to threaten national security, foreign policy and the economy of the States. United".

He also said in a decree in early August that WeChat was recovering "the data of Chinese visitors to the United States (...), which allows the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their life ".

For Judge Beeler, however, the evidence of a threat to national security linked specifically to WeChat "is modest".

China had reacted strongly to threats to ban downloads from TikTok and WeChat by denouncing Saturday "the intimidation" of the United States and by establishing a mechanism allowing it to restrict the activities of foreign companies.

Against a "list of untrustworthy entities" - whose names have not been made public - Beijing is planning potential sanctions ranging from fines to restriction of activities or entry of equipment and personnel into China.

© 2020 AFP