![\"close](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/GettyImages-992782254-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
For the better part of thirty years telecom giants (and the consultants, think tanks, and lobbyists paid to defend them) have fought against\u00a0every<\/strong>\u00a0effort at coherent federal oversight. It didn\u2019t matter whether it was\u00a0modest privacy standards<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0basic pricing transparency<\/a>, the argument that was if you stripped away coherent state and federal government oversight of telecom, free market\u00a0magic would happen<\/strong>.<\/p>\nNot only is U.S. broadband uncompetitive, patchy, expensive, with bad customer service as a result, lax oversight and privacy\/security standards has resulted in a steady parade of hacks and leaks, culminating recently in the\u00a0worst hacking intrusions the U.S. has ever seen<\/a>. Chinese hackers deeply infiltrated nine major U.S. ISPs to spy on high profile targets, and the government and U.S. telecoms are still trying to assess the damage months later. (Why, it\u2019s almost as if corruption is a national security risk.)<\/p>\n Because the \u201cSalt Typhoon\u201d hackers were very careful about wiping logs it\u2019s been\u00a0difficult to assess the full scale of the intrusion or whether intruders are still in sensitive systems<\/a>. Officials believe intruders could still be rooting around the networks of the nine compromised ISPs. They also state the hack was because telecoms \u201cfailed to implement rudimentary cybersecurity measures across their IT infrastructure<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. reporting on the hack has been\u2026interesting.<\/p>\n The story has seen a fraction of the press attention reserved\u00a0for the TikTok moral panic<\/a>. And very few news outlets are willing to draw a direct line between the telecom industry\u2019s relentless \u201cderegulatory\u201d lobbying (read: corruption) and the intrusion, despite U.S. officials making it very clear in statements:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I talked with our U.K. colleagues and I asked, \u2018do you believe your regulations would have prevented the\u00a0Salt Typhoon<\/a>\u00a0attack?\u2019, their comment to me was,\u00a0\u2018we would have found it faster. We would have contained it faster, [and] it wouldn\u2019t have spread as widely and had the impact and been as undiscovered for as long,\u2019 had those regulations been in place,<\/strong>\u201d [White House Cybersecurity chief] Anne Neuberger said. \u201cThat\u2019s a powerful message.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The FCC is poised to hold meetings next month to address whether it should shore up its cybersecurity oversight of telecoms. But at the helm of those conversations will be\u00a0new Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr<\/a>, who has\u00a0never stood up to major telecoms on any issue of importance, ever<\/a>. And the looming\u00a0Trump-court-backed defeat of net neutrality<\/a>\u00a0also curtails the FCC\u2019s authority on cybersecurity<\/em>.<\/p>\n Again, the U.S. Congress has repeatedly proven too corrupt to pass meaningful telecom reform. Regulators are routinely stocked with revolving door careerists too worried about their next career move to stand up to telecoms. And the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court\u00a0just neutered what\u2019s left of regulatory independence<\/a>, ceding most reforms to a Congress too corrupt to act.<\/p>\n The Salt Typhoon hack comes after years and years of officials freaking out about the security risks of\u00a0Chinese-made Huawei telecom hardware<\/a>. Though when the worst hack in U.S. history finally arrived it was courtesy of lax domestic oversight, domestic deregulation, domestic corruption, domestic laziness, and outdated administrative passwords.<\/p>\n Mindlessly \u2018Deregulating\u2019 U.S. Telecom Contributed to The Worst Hack In U.S. History<\/a><\/p>\n More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:<\/strong><\/p>\n Oklahoma AG Steps Up To Ensure Cop Who Broke 71-Year-Old Man\u2019s Neck Won\u2019t Face Criminal Charges<\/a> From the when-the-check-comes-due dept The post Mindlessly \u2018Deregulating\u2019 U.S. Telecom Contributed to The Worst Hack In U.S. History appeared first on Above the Law. For the better part of thirty years telecom giants (and the consultants, think tanks, and lobbyists paid to defend them) have fought against\u00a0every\u00a0effort at coherent federal oversight. It didn\u2019t matter whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":99075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law","category-legal_matters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/GettyImages-992782254-scaled-IyaJ4R.jpeg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Elon Musk Doesn\u2019t Like Some Headlines. But That Doesn\u2019t Make Them Defamatory<\/a>
\u2018Free Speech Absolutist\u2019 Elon Musk Suspends Critics On ExTwitter, Asks People To Be Nicer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"