The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday moved to reverse course and rescind a prior Declaratory Ruling that had misinterpreted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The agency also withdrew the related notice of proposed rulemaking, saying both actions were built on flawed legal reasoning and would have produced weak cybersecurity requirements. The decision follows months of engagement with communications service providers, which the FCC said have strengthened their cybersecurity posture in the wake of Salt Typhoon.
“Foreign adversaries and other bad actors have repeatedly launched cyberattacks targeting American communications networks,” the FCC said in a statement. “Over the past several months, the agency has engaged with providers that have agreed to take ‘extensive, urgent, and coordinated efforts to mitigate operational risks, protect consumers, and preserve national security interests’ against the range of cyberattacks that target their networks. Today’s action reinforces this commitment going forward.”
Since January, the FCC has taken a series of actions to harden communications networks and improve their security posture, enhancing the agency’s investigative process into communications networks outages that result from cyber incidents.
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