FCC and Hikvision at Loggerheads on Gear Authorization Mandate
The FCC asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not to impose a mandate on the regulator to start the process of authorizing gear by China’s Hikvision. Hikvision and Dahua won a partial victory last year (see 2404020068) when the D.C. Circuit held that the FCC’s definition of critical infrastructure in a 2022 order was “overly broad.” Judges also rejected arguments that video cameras and video-surveillance equipment manufactured by the companies shouldn’t have been placed on the agency’s “covered list” of unsecure gear.
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“The Commission has ignored this Court’s decision, and has instead doubled down on its total ban on approvals of Hikvision equipment, regardless of whether that equipment is even arguably ‘covered’ by the statutory regime,” Hikvision said in seeking an order from the court. The Chinese company cited the example of a wet-and-dry vacuum cleaner it makes, which has no telecommunications transmission capability and no camera. “Notwithstanding this Court’s decision,” the FCC “continues to make it impossible for the company to get even such obviously non-covered equipment approved for sale” in the U.S., Hikvision said.
The relief Hikvision seeks “goes beyond the scope of this Court’s mandate, which was limited to requiring the FCC to revise its definition of critical infrastructure,” the FCC said in a response filed with the court Monday. The court didn’t “direct the agency either to entertain equipment authorization requests from covered manufacturers or to approve those manufacturers’ proposed compliance plans,” the FCC said: “Nor has Hikvision otherwise established a ‘clear and indisputable right’ to relief as would be required to warrant a writ of mandamus.”