US bans sale of foreign made WiFi routers

[Cristio Nasser]

This one came out of the blue.

[WIRED] The FCC just banned the sale of new consumer-grade Wi-Fi routers manufactured outside the US.

Seems an extreme move, and it’s not clear what the specifics are beyond mealy-mouthed “national security concerns”. It must be something big and a widespread vulnerability deliberately engineered into such devices being discovered.

Any Tech bods here have any deeper insight into what’s going on? Do we think the UK will follow suit?

[Panamax]

Same reason as the ban on Huawei gear,

The U.S. and several allies have heavily restricted Huawei, citing national security risks that its 5G network equipment could enable Chinese espionage. This resulted in bans on buying new 5G gear, mandated removal of existing equipment (notably in the UK by 2027), and U.S. sanctions cutting off access to some essential technology.

Big Brother's watching you, but he doesn't want Rabbit's Friends And Relations watching you as well.

[frisbee]

They've banned the latest foreign (Chinese) made drones as well. American ones are st so they just buy them anyway.

[colin79666]

They haven t banned them exactly, just introduced tougher processes to get approval. If a manufacturer stuffs enough brown envelopes they can get something through.

Most consumers don’t care and just use whatever their isp gave them. If it was really about security they would have published a list of minimum requirements. Instead this just looks like another ill thought out American First thing to please a few politicians and their followers who don’t know better.

[Lucas Ayde]

This basically indicates that THEY (the US agencies) are compromising things like domestic routers to spy on people and are panicking that others might be doing the same.

It's nothing new - quite a few years ago now the US intelligence agencies got caught tinkering with Cisco routers in transit to various 'nations of interest'. Looks like they've moved their operations down to the household level, spying on their own people.

[CoolHands]

Meh. If anyone wants to spy on what I’m reading, have at it!

Although thinking about it starmer will send the bobbies round if he catches you looking at anything not Labour approved, so maybe I should be careful

[Hill92]

The loopehole is that existing approved routers can remain on the market. So manufacturers will just keep supplying those to the US market while the rest of the world moves on to new models. Nobody is going to set up manufacturing in the US for this.

[LivLL]

Another form of easy mass comminication attacked. No doubt their Dear Leader will mandate US manufacturers install systems in their routes that federal agents can access at any time.

[Tycho]

It's utter bullst as commercial routers are still going to be available IIRC. Which one's do you think the foreign secret services are going to be interested in? It's not the home users so this is just another shakedown for money.