FCC Chairman Brendan Carr rescinds orders from his predecessor made this past January
The Declaratory Ruling made this past January by the FCC was related to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The latter is a law passed in 1994 that forced wireless providers to be ready to handle wiretap requests. The law forces carriers to:
- Keep their networks safe from unlawful access or interception of communications.
- Broaden protection as Cybersecurity measures must extend beyond the specific wiretap-capable equipment to include broader network management systems.
The FCC under Rosenworcel not only adopted the Declaratory Ruling but also the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which required telecom providers to:
- Create and implement cyber-security risk management plans.
- Prove that they have been compliant by obtaining FCC certification.
- Treat general network security as a legal obligation subject to fines.
Under the FCC Chairwoman appointed by President Biden, the carriers were responsible for making sure that hackers could not intercept any communications and keep their wireless networks secure. This would seem to be a valid way to get the wireless providers to be on the ball in an effort to make their networks and thus their customers safe from attacks. Keep in mind that Rosenworcel’s orders were supposed to go beyond the protection of files related to wiretaps and include the carrier’s regular network activities.
When Brendan Carr took over as FCC Chairman following his appointment from President Donald Trump, he claimed that CALEA was only intended to cover legal wiretaps on specific parts of a carrier’s network, not force certain Cybersecurity standards to be applied across all of the wireless firms’ networks. The Carr led FCC says that the demands on the carriers made by CALEA were unnecessary since the carriers voluntarily agreed to tighten their networks after the discovery of the Salt Typhoon attacks.
Similar to the rescinding of Net Neutrality, a Trump-appointed FCC Chair wipes a consumer-friendly rule off the books
The Democrats have argued that a voluntary approach to fighting state-sponsored attacks will not work. And the majority of PhoneArena readers who participated in the poll embedded in the original article agree. Over 45% of those readers taking part in the poll said that the plan by Rosenworcel (who is the sister of Guster drummer Brian Rosenworcel) puts them more at ease. Only 14% said that Carr’s plan put them at ease. 40% wondered whether either approach would matter.
Why would Carr allow the carriers to no longer be on the hook when it comes to protecting their networks and customers? It would be for the same reason that the FCC, under Ajit Pai, the FCC Chairman appointed by Trump during his first term, led the regulatory agency to wipe net neutrality off the books. This was the Obama-era rule that prevented ISPs and carriers from slowing down or blocking certain content. It also prevented the providers from offering “fast lanes” to companies that would pay extra and would use that faster speed to reach consumers.
In both cases, the FCC Chairman at the time, Ajit Pai and Brendan Carr, rescinded rules that would protect consumers and perhaps cost carriers a little more money. Just for the record, I’m not taking sides, and I won’t say which approach I believe is right and which I believe is wrong. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. What I will say is that the two recent GOP FCC Chairmen took action to protect companies like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile while the one liberal Chairwoman protected consumers even if it meant that the carriers had to pay more to follow the FCC rules at the time.
Based on the poll results, it will seem that our readers seem to favor the liberal approach.
