The Justice Department

Three prominent 2024 DOJ stories centered on enforcement against Apple, Adobe and TikTok, extending its tech coverage from antitrust into consumer and child-data protections.

Who they are

The Justice Department appears in this coverage as the U.S. federal enforcement authority behind technology-focused antitrust suits, consumer-protection actions, criminal charges and cybersecurity cases. Its stories place it alongside agencies including the FBI and FTC and opposite major platforms and technology companies such as Apple, Google, TikTok, Adobe and Nvidia.

The recent arc

Recent coverage concentrated most heavily in 2024Q2, when the department sued Adobe over subscription-enrollment practices and was reported to be leading an antitrust inquiry into Nvidia, while the FTC would handle inquiries involving OpenAI and Microsoft. That followed the March 2024 suit against Apple, which alleged that iPhone practices restricted competitor access and made switching devices harder. Together, those stories shifted the department’s visible tech role beyond the earlier Google search-monopoly case toward a broader enforcement agenda across platforms, devices, subscriptions and AI-adjacent infrastructure.

In 2024Q3, the DOJ sued TikTok over alleged collection of children’s data and accounts for under-13 users, underscoring the consumer and privacy dimension of that agenda. Subsequent coverage has also returned to criminal enforcement, including charges alleging a Chinese espionage campaign in March 2025 and the December 2025 indictment of Opexus contractors accused of deleting U.S. government databases.

The tension

The core tension is between the DOJ’s effort to police market power, platform conduct and data practices and the business models of large technology companies. Apple and Google anchor the competition side of the coverage, while TikTok and Adobe illustrate scrutiny of user-data and subscription practices; the separate allocation of Nvidia to DOJ and OpenAI/Microsoft to the FTC shows enforcement responsibility being divided rather than treated as a single technology-policy front.

Why it matters

If this trajectory holds, the Justice Department will remain a key force shaping how major tech companies defend product integration, switching friction, consumer disclosures and data practices, while its cyber and espionage cases keep national-security enforcement in the same coverage frame. The eventual impact depends on court outcomes and investigative findings, but the combination of competition and conduct cases means scrutiny is reaching beyond any one company or technology category.

Related: DOJ · Apple · Google · TikTok · FBI · The US DOJ sues Apple, alleging the company blocked its competitors fr