bodyType

customContents

entityId

printArticlePageQuery

filter

article

body

urlAlias

articleSectionsContent

articleSeoArticle

articleSourceHeaderArticle

contentSchemaRenderContent

contentSubHeadlineContent

contentHeadlineContent

mainImagePrintArticleArticle

authorBlockPrintArticleArticle

contentSponsorTagContent

articlePianoPaywallContent

scmpYoutubeContent

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

query printArticlePageQuery(
  $entityId: String!
  $customContents: [CustomContentInput]
  $bodyType: BodyFormatTypeEnum
) {
  article(filter: {entityId: $entityId}) {
    entityId
    body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
      json
    }
    urlAlias
    ...articleSectionsContent
    ...articleSeoArticle_3o8td4
    ...articleSourceHeaderArticle
    ...contentSchemaRenderContent
    ...contentSubHeadlineContent
    ...contentHeadlineContent
    ...mainImagePrintArticleArticle
    ...authorBlockPrintArticleArticle
    ...contentSponsorTagContent
    ...articlePianoPaywallContent
    ...scmpYoutubeContent
    ...hooksTrackPageViewArticle
    id
  }
}

fragment articlePianoPaywallContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksPaywallPromiseContent
}

fragment articleSectionsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        name
        published
      }
      ... on VideoSection {
        name
        published
      }
      ...helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection
      ...entityLink
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
}

fragment articleSeoArticle_3o8td4 on Article {
  ...hooksArticleSeoArticle
  ...helpersGetArticleTypeArticle
  entityId
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
  summary {
    text
  }
  subHeadline {
    text
  }
  body(customContents: $customContents, type: $bodyType) {
    text
  }
  keywords
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        name
      }
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
  topics {
    name
    entityId
    id
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  images {
    style(filter: {style: "768x768"}) {
      url
    }
  }
  readingTime
}

fragment articleSourceHeaderArticle on Article {
  urlAlias
  ...entityLink
}

fragment authorBlockPrintArticleArticle on Article {
  ...defaultArticleDateContent
  ...authorNamesArticle
}

fragment authorNameAuthor on Author {
  ...entityLink
  name
  entityUuid
}

fragment authorNamesArticle on Article {
  authorLocations
  authors {
    entityId
    location
    ...authorNameAuthor
    id
  }
}

fragment blockquoteQuoteContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment contentHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  socialHeadline
  ...contentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
}

fragment contentNewsletterWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
    id
  }
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        relatedNewsletters {
          ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
          id
        }
      }
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
  ... on Article {
    relatedNewsletters {
      ...helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment contentSchemaRenderContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...blockquoteQuoteContent
  ...hooksInlinePlusWidgetContent
  ...imageContent
  ...inlineWidgetContent
  ...photoGalleryWidgetContent
  ...scmpYoutubeContent
}

fragment contentShareWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  shortUrl
  socialHeadline
  headline
  ... on Video {
    youtubeId
  }
}

fragment contentSponsorTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersUseContentSponsorContent
}

fragment contentSubHeadlineContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  subHeadline {
    json
  }
  summary {
    json
  }
  ...contentSchemaRenderContent
}

fragment defaultArticleDateContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...hooksArticleDateUtilsContent
}

fragment entityLink on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  __typename
  entityId
  entityUuid
  urlAlias
  urlRedirect {
    toUrl
    id
  }
  application {
    entityId
    id
  }
  ... on Section {
    fullSectionPath {
      entityId
      id
    }
    parentSection
  }
  ...helpersAppBarVariantBase
  ...helpersApplicationBase
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersAppBarVariantBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsLiveArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...helpersSectionContent
  ...helpersStyleSectionContent
}

fragment helpersApplicationBase on BaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias {
  __isBaseWithApplicationAndUrlAlias: __typename
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusPage
}

fragment helpersCheckIfNewsSectionInFirstIndexSection on SectionUnion {
  __isSectionUnion: __typename
  ... on Section {
    name
  }
  ... on VideoSection {
    name
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle on Article {
  entityId
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        entityId
      }
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
  disableOffPlatformContent
  sponsorType
  published
  ...helpersCheckIsPlusArticle
}

fragment helpersCheckIsLiveArticle on Article {
  flattenTypeIds
  liveArticle {
    status
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    paywallTypes {
      entityUuid
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPlusPage on Page {
  urlAlias
}

fragment helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        entityId
      }
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersCheckIsStyleArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        entityId
      }
      ... on VideoSection {
        entityId
      }
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersGetArticleTypeArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        entityId
        id
      }
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersMassageToNewsletterItemNewsletter on Newsletter {
  entityId
  name
  alternativeName
  description {
    text
  }
  summary {
    text
  }
  homepageDescription {
    text
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle on Article {
  authors {
    types
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle on Article {
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersStyleSectionContent on Section {
  fullSectionPath {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment helpersUseContentSponsorContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    sponsor {
      ...sponsorTagSponsor
      name
      type
      id
    }
    id
  }
  ... on Article {
    sponsorType
  }
  ...helpersCheckIsMainTopicContent
}

fragment hooksArticleDateUtilsContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  createdDate
  publishedDate
  updatedDate
}

fragment hooksArticleSeoArticle on Article {
  ...helpersCheckIsPostMagazineArticle
  ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  ...hooksContentHeadlineTagContent
  ...helpersCheckIsAmpEnabledArticle
  entityId
  headline
  socialHeadline
  types {
    value {
      entityId
      id
    }
  }
  authors {
    entityId
    id
  }
  images {
    generic_og: style(filter: {style: "og_image_scmp_generic"}) {
      url
    }
    styles(filter: {styles: ["og_postmag", "og_image_style", "og_image_scmp_analysis", "og_image_scmp_explainer", "og_image_scmp_editorial", "og_image_scmp_fact_check", "og_image_scmp_debate", "og_image_scmp_live", "og_image_scmp_obituary", "og_image_scmp_opinion", "og_image_scmp_review", "og_image_scmp_series", "og_image_scmp_generic"]}) {
      url
      style
    }
    type
  }
  urlAlias
}

fragment hooksContentHeadlineTagContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ... on Article {
    types {
      value {
        name
        entityId
        description {
          text
        }
        id
      }
    }
    ...helpersCheckIsStyleArticle
  }
  flag
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        name
      }
      ... on VideoSection {
        name
      }
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
  ...hooksContentHelperContent
}

fragment hooksContentHelperContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...helpersSanitizeArticleTypeEntityIdsArticle
  ...helpersSanitizeAuthorTypesArticle
  ...helpersSanitizedAuthorEntityIdsArticle
  flag
}

fragment hooksInlinePlusWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  topics {
    entityId
    id
  }
}

fragment hooksPaywallPromiseContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
}

fragment hooksTrackPageViewArticle on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  publishedDate
  headline
  sectionsV2 {
    value {
      __typename
      ... on Section {
        name
      }
      ... on Node {
        __isNode: __typename
        id
      }
    }
  }
  urlAlias
  authors {
    name
    id
  }
  entityUuid
}

fragment imageContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  headline
  ...checkersCheckContentContainsStarlingImageContent
}

fragment inlineWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...contentNewsletterWidgetContent
}

fragment mainImagePrintArticleArticle on Article {
  images {
    title
    url
    isSlideshow
    size_652x446: style(filter: {style: "652x446"}) {
      url
    }
  }
}

fragment photoGalleryDialogContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  __typename
  ...contentShareWidgetContent
}

fragment photoGalleryWidgetContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  ...photoGalleryDialogContent
}

fragment scmpYoutubeContent on Content {
  __isContent: __typename
  entityId
  urlAlias
  publishedDate
}

fragment sponsorTagSponsor on Sponsor {
  name
  type
  images {
    url
  }
}


types

sectionsV2

disableOffPlatformContent

sponsorType

published

headline

socialHeadline

authors

images

publishedDate

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

keywords

topics

readingTime

authorLocations

Khushboo Razdan

On July 28, the director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute posted a US Justice Department document on social media related to TikTok’s legal challenge against the company’s potential ban in the United States.
“The Biden admin has finally told the DC Circuit why Americans can’t have access to TikTok,” wrote Jameel Jaffer, on X, formerly Twitter.
The post comprised a page from a brief submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, entirely obscured by black marking and unreadable.
In a subsequent post, Jaffer quipped: “To be fair, not all of the brief is redacted. But the parts that aren’t redacted are no more persuasive than the parts that are.”
The disclosure came months after the US Congress and President Joe Biden supported bipartisan legislation requiring TikTok, a Chinese-owned short-video platform used daily by 170 million Americans, to either secure a non-Chinese buyer by January 19, 2025, or face removal from stateside app stores and web-hosting services.


In backing the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which became law in April, Washington lawmakers and officials cited a broad US national-security concern: the possibility that Beijing could force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to alter its algorithm in a way that could harm US interests.
According to the Justice Department’s court filings, the decision to advance the law was based on “highly sensitive” information collected by the American government and shared with Congress.
Next Monday, when the court hears the case’s first oral arguments, the government will seek to keep that information confidential, shielding it from the public and the petitioners while urging the court to consider it in ruling in favour of the law.
In contrast, the petitioners are expected to challenge the recently passed law and point to a lack of evidence and an unprecedented level of government secrecy in enforcing a measure they claim infringes on free speech.
Now it is up to the court, which has already seen the secret evidence, to decide whether it will consider the information when issuing its judgment in the case. It remains to be seen whether the court will raise questions about the secret evidence in a separate classified setting with government lawyers.
Experts suggest that, despite the considerable public interest in understanding the evidence behind TikTok’s alleged threat to the US, the court is unlikely to rule in favour of the social-media platform.
Some analysts have argued that revealing this evidence could effectively disclose to China how the US monitors the country’s activities.
Others attributed the anticipated outcome to not only national-security concerns but also strong agreement between the government’s legislative and executive branches on the threat TikTok could pose.
Regardless, a ruling against TikTok based on secret evidence could erode public confidence in the American legal system, some observers add, at least for some time.

For its first hearing, the court has combined three legal challenges: one filed by TikTok and ByteDance; another by a group of TikTok content creators; and a third by the Liberty Justice Centre representing Based Politics, Inc, a non-profit group that promotes free markets and individual liberties to young Americans via social media.
TikTok has accused the government of “hiding” behind “secret evidence” and demanded that this information be either disclosed or removed by the Justice Department. The company has asked the court to appoint a federal judge as a “special master” to sift through the classified evidence and “recommend factual findings”.
In addition, it has alleged “factual errors” in the unredacted portions of the DoJ filings, which mainly include public statements from intelligence officials and media reports.
TikTok contends that while the government claims the company’s recommendation engine – a software system enlisting machine learning and data analysis to suggest products, content or services to users – was “based in China”, its “unrebutted evidence establishes” it is stored in Oracle Cloud, a US-based cloud-computing service.
“The government offers no evidence showing that the algorithm actually resides within China,” TikTok said in its court filings.
Jacob Huebert, president of the Liberty Justice Centre, told the Post that the other petitioners joined TikTok in demanding that the government either disclose the evidence or dismiss it.
As a rule, US courts “don’t use secret evidence”, Huebert said. “That’s antithetical to the due process that our Constitution guarantees.”
When the government is “infringing First-Amendment rights like that, it bears a very heavy burden to show, typically with evidence that’s necessary and evidence is certainly necessary here, where so many millions of people are losing their right to speak freely on TikTok”, he added.
“We also would argue … that it doesn’t really matter what the redacted evidence is. The government should lose this case anyway because in its arguments the government doesn’t suggest that TikTok poses the kind of immediate threat that would be necessary to justify infringing on First-Amendment rights.”

Beyond labelling the information “secret” and “top secret,” the government’s filings reference several previous cases in which the court permitted the submission of redacted classified material and rejected challenges to the redactions.
The cited precedents include a 2015 case in which a Peruvian airline founder challenged the US Treasury’s decision, endorsed by the president, to label him a significant foreign narcotics trafficker.
Another case involved Ralls Corp, a wind-farm developer owned by Chinese nationals that sued the American government in 2014 for blocking it from taking over four US-based entities.
A third case involved an Iranian entity’s challenge to its 2004 designation as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US State Department.
Huebert believed “there’s never been a case like” TikTok in which the government was “infringing” on First-Amendment free-speech rights on a massive scale and the court had agreed to rely on evidence “that is kept, not only from the public, but also from attorneys for the opposing parties”.
Yet circumstances such as TikTok’s are “not that unprecedented when it comes to intelligence matters and this is ultimately an intelligence matter involving China and the Ministry of State Security”, according to James Lewis of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Lewis said the issue had come up in the past, and even lawmakers and congressional staff had been denied information.
“The committees that don’t have jurisdiction over intelligence matters complain that they aren’t being told everything. But that’s just how it goes,” added Lewis, a former diplomat. “In this business, there’s things that are secret and they have to stay secret.”
Disclosing the evidence would risk telling “the Chinese useful information about how we monitor their behaviour”, Lewis said. “If you tell people, you do even more damage and that’s what they’re worried about.”

Alan Rozenshtein of the University of Minnesota Law School raised the example of US federal courts in the 2000s “routinely” using classified evidence when prisoners in Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba challenged their detention.
“The courts would frequently say, ‘look, we have secret evidence … you have to stay in Guantanamo Bay and we think that evidence is good. And we’re not going to tell you what it is’,” he added, saying such a scenario was less common in First-Amendment cases.
“So even in First Amendment cases, it’s not fully unprecedented,” said Rozenshtein. He recounted a federal court in California upholding a restriction to Twitter’s First-Amendment right to publish a national-security transparency report in 2023, citing national-security grounds.
That said, the Minnesota law professor thought the use of secret evidence in the TikTok case could shake public confidence in the legal system “to some degree”.
“One key feature of a legitimate legal system is that it explains its reasoning to the public. And if you’re going to restrict 170 million people’s First-Amendment rights on the basis of secret evidence, that’s very unsatisfying.”
As much as young Americans in particular love TikTok, Rozenshtein predicted they would ultimately move on. “They will be extremely angry if TikTok goes away, but then they will all move to Instagram reels.”
Mark Jia of Georgetown University Law Centre also believed the “public has a strong and legitimate interest in knowing about the government’s evidence of the threats posed by TikTok”.
While “such interest may not extend to the entirety of what was relied on”, Jia said, in this case, “seemingly all of the core evidence has been redacted. The public has the right to know substantially more than it has been told”.

Jia noted that “the legal standards in national-security matters like this one are generally quite favourable to the government”, leading him to think the Justice Department “will prevail in keeping most of it secret”.
He highlighted the agreement between the legislative and executive branches on the matter, saying a bipartisan consensus on a major foreign-policy issue like national security often led to “inter-branch consensus”.
When that happened, Jia observed, Congress and the US president were “going to be less likely to check each other”. Meanwhile, the judicial branch tended to “recognise that the political branches have more national-security expertise than the courts”.
Both Congress and the Biden administration reviewed the classified evidence before allowing the TikTok ‘divest-or-be banned’ measure to become law, according to court filings.
Rozenshtein agreed that inter-branch consensus would be a factor, calling it “a huge deal”.
“It’s not as if the courts always defer to the political branches,” he said. “They often don’t … but it is nevertheless the case that, especially in national-security and foreign-policy cases, the courts are extremely hesitant to strike down the actions of the political branches, especially when there’s consensus between the branches.”
Courts were also mindful of other possible consequences, Rozenshtein said.
“They really don’t want to be held responsible if something really bad happens in national security and foreign affairs, right?”


Will US law banning TikTok prevail on secret government evidence?

A redacted passage from a court filing in TikTok’s legal challenge to a US law that forces it to divest from its Chinese owner or be banned stateside. Photo: Handout

Jacob Huebert, president of the Liberty Justice Centre, is a lawyer in the TikTok case representing Based Politics, Inc, a non-profit group that promotes free markets and individual liberties via social media. Photo: Handout

TikTok maintains offices in the US, such as this one in Los Angeles. Its parent company is ByteDance, a Chinese tech firm. Photo: EPA-EFE

Alan Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, says confidence in the US legal system could be shaken by how the TikTok case is handled. Photo: Handout

TikTok users in the US are expected to shift to other social-media platforms if the app is banned stateside. Photo: AFP

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Chinese-owned app’s legal case said to turn on information kept not only from the public but also from lawyers for the petitioners


Chinese-owned app’s legal case said to turn on information kept not only from the public but also from lawyers for the petitioners.


Will US law banning TikTok prevail on secret government evidence?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Chinese-owned app’s legal case said to turn on information kept not only from the public but also from lawyers for the petitioners

Chinese-owned app’s legal case said to turn on information kept not only from the public but also from lawyers for the petitioners