Netgear Gets Mysterious Exemption To Trump FCC ‘Router Ban,’ Refuses To Say How

from the nice-router.-Shame-if-somethin’-was-to-happen-to-it. dept

Late last month we noted how the Trump FCC under Brendan Carr announced a “new ban” on all routers made overseas (which means pretty much all of them). At the time we also noted how this was less of a ban and more of a shakedown, with router manufacturers required to beg the Trump FCC for conditional waivers (fees, favors, whatever) to continue doing business in the States.

Netgear is the first out of the gate to announce they’ve struck a deal with the FCC, but they’re curiously refusing to say what exactly was required to get Trump FCC approval. Actual security improvements? Backdoors for domestic surveillance? Cash payouts? Nobody knows!

“Neither the FCC’s announcement nor Netgear’s announcement explain why Netgear was granted the temporary exemption. The FCC only states that the Pentagon has now made “a specific determination” that “such devices do not pose risks to U.S. national security.”

The Netgear FAQ is equally ambiguous about what the company had to do to win the Trump administration’s favor. The email I received about the approval promises that this somehow improved consumer security, but there’s zero indication anywhere as to how:

“We’re pleased to share that NETGEAR is the first retail consumer router company to receive conditional approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a trusted consumer router company. We hope this recognition gives you added peace of mind — knowing that the network powering your home meets rigorous standards.”

As you’re probably aware by now, neither Trump nor Carr ever really do anything that’s just authentically in the public interest, even on cybersecurity. Everything is always transactional.

The vast majority of the duo’s actions to date have made the United States significantly less secure, whether it’s the firing of officials responsible for online election security, or their blanket and mindless “deregulation” of a U.S. telecom sector that was just the target of one of the worst cybersecurity incidents in U.S. history (in large part because it failed to change default router admin passwords).

The original Trump FCC “router ban” also included rhetoric claiming that foreign router manufacturers would have to provide “a detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States,” but there’s absolutely zero indication Netgear has done anything of the sort, either in their public statements or their required alerts sent to investors.

Great stuff! Super transparent and not at all dodgy.

If you look around the web, the vast majority of U.S. media outlets covering this “router ban” operate from the belief that this is a good faith effort to improve cybersecurity and that Trump regulators are reliable narrators, and every shred of evidence to date suggests that’s a terrible assumption for a journalist (or anyone else) to make.

Filed Under: brendan carr, donald trump, fcc, hacking, hardware, network, privacy, routers, security

Companies: netgear