The Federal Communications Commission announced plans this week to remove several cybersecurity regulations put in place after Chinese hackers breached multiple telecommunications giants to steal the correspondence of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance last year.
The FCC did not respond to requests for comment, but Chairman Brendan Carr released a statement that said the agency would reverse a declaratory ruling published in January which would have mandated telecoms to better secure their networks and submit annual certifications attesting to the creation of a cybersecurity risk management plan.
In a lengthy regulatory document published on Thursday, FCC Secretary Marlene Dortch outlined the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the ruling — arguing that telecoms have already taken voluntary steps to secure their networks and that the ruling was “legally erroneous.”
Dortch said the ruling “applies the same inflexible, across-the-board cybersecurity requirements to all telecommunications carriers without regard to their risk, size, or organizational posture.”
“This vague and amorphous standard risks imposing costly new burdens on many…
