Major Trade Associations Urge FCC to Overturn Salt Typhoon Ruling
Major trade groups are at odds with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on whether the FCC should reconsider its January declaratory ruling in response to the Salt Typhoon cyberattacks. That ruling was opposed by now-Chairman Brendan Carr (see 2501160041). The FCC concluded then that Section 105 of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) “affirmatively requires telecommunications carriers to secure their networks from unlawful access or interception of communications.”
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CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom last month asked the FCC to reconsider the ruling (see 2502190081). That petition received only one opposition: a four-page submission from EPIC “that expresses concern about ongoing cybersecurity threats but says little about the multiple legal deficiencies in the Declaratory Ruling that the Associations identified,” the groups said in a filing Monday in docket 22-329.
U.S. networks' cybersecurity problems are “well-documented at this point -- although the full scope of the risks and harms both incurred and ongoing remains hidden from the public,” EPIC said. “In a cynical turn, it is the same carriers on whose watch this egregious, unprecedented breach was permitted to occur who now bemoan and frustrate the FCC’s efforts to remedy the situation.”
EPIC’s opposition “fails to meaningfully address the Petition’s showing that the Declaratory Ruling is not consistent with CALEA’s text, structure, and purposes, nor with the FCC’s implementing rules,” CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom said. “These factors all point in one direction: Congress adopted the statute for the narrow purpose of preserving law enforcement’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance, not to impose a general set of network security duties on every entity covered by CALEA.”