Citing national security fears, America is effectively banning any new consumer-grade network routers made abroad.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has updated its Covered List to include all foreign-made consumer routers, prohibiting the approval of any new models.
For clarification, the FCC says this change does not prevent the import, sale, or use of any existing models that the agency previously authorized.
That Covered List details equipment and services covered by Section 2 of The Secure Networks Act, which, by their inclusion, are deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to US national security.
According to the FCC, this move follows a determination by a “White House-convened Executive Branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise,” in line with President Trump’s National Security Strategy that the US must not be dependent on any other country for core components necessary to the nation’s defense or economy.
Its determination was that foreign-produced routers introduce a supply chain vulnerability which could disrupt critical infrastructure and national defense, and pose a severe cybersecurity risk that could harm Americans.
Your options for a new router will be Amazon or Google and you will like it. Also it will be 19.99 a month from your ISP. And you have no control or access to any settings in it.
I’m calling it now - Palantir and others of their ilk will be the ones leading this nonsense.
Ding ding ding
Palantir, the copyright assholes
I can name a few more
If you want to spy on everything that all people do, their modems and traffic routers will be step one
Yeah, I think this is less about how secure foreign routers are and more about inserting their own backdoors in citizens hardware for surveillance purposes.
Next it’s going to be mandatory for US router manufacturers to leave a hardcoded backdoor for feds to use at any arbitrary reason.
I genuinely thought that was already the case
It is. CALEA has been around for a long time, and it’s surprising to me not many people are aware of it
I wonder how they define “router”. Any device with two network interfaces can be made into a router.
Edit: phrasing
Noooo, FCC, this isn’t a router, it’s just a computer with 6 network interfaces
I think you actually need 3.
Otherwise there is no real “routing” just “in here, out there” and vice versa.The “routing” can still refer to routing to devices attached via a switch. So no need for a third port to qualify as a router.
