FCC guts post-Salt Typhoon telco rules despite ongoing espionage risk

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has scrapped a set of telecom cybersecurity rules introduced after the Salt Typhoon espionage campaign, reversing course on measures designed to stop state-backed snoops from slipping back into America's networks.

In a 2-1 vote last week, the agency revoked the January Declaratory Ruling that had sought to force carriers to lock down their systems under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

That earlier move, introduced in the aftermath of the China-linked Salt Typhoon intrusions, was meant to harden networks used for lawful intercept and other sensitive functions. But the FCC now says the whole thing was "unlawful and ineffective," and has torn up both the ruling and the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that rode in with it.

The rollback follows what the Commission describes as months of "extensive, urgent, and coordinated" cooperation from carriers following the Salt Typhoon discovery. In its announcement ...