[22451] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my national radio report yesterday on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Tue Nov 4 11:38:00 2025
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2025 08:29:28 -0800
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
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This is the script of my usual national radio report yesterday, on the
topic of the U.S. government moving to possibly ban extremely popular
networking gear maker TP-LINK. As usual, there may have been minor
wording variations from this script as I presented this report live on air.
- - -
So yeah we seem to be in another one of these "deja vu all over again"
moments, and as before it's interesting to consider what we're told by
the government is going on vs. what actually seems to be going on.
We've discussed how the U.S. federal government and some state
governments have gone after Chinese drone maker DJI, moving toward
effectively banning their products being sold in the U.S., via the
Commerce Department and Congress, and the FCC. In fact the FCC just a
few days ago voted to give themselves the power to retroactively claw
back use approvals for products that they had already approved, which
would mean imports of such previously approved products would have to
cease.
Now DJI on their own seem to have pretty much given up on finding a
government agency to do the congressionally mandated security study by
the end of this year. DJI insists that they are not a security risk
and that they're ready to cooperate to do the mandated study but no
U.S. government agency has been willing to do the study. Kafka would
be smiling about this one. So on their own DJI has essentially stopped
selling drones into the U.S., which has been a big deal since so many
organizations depend on those drones more than drones from any other
firm.
And while of course we know law enforcement, and search and rescue,
and utilities, and farmers, and more depend on those DJI drones,
they're still not something that most consumers deal with directly.
But now the federal government is seriously moving to ban equipment
from TP-LINK, the Irvine, California firm that split off from a
Chinese firm. And TP-LINK makes equipment that DOES affect a vast
number of consumers since their networking equipment is extremely
popular and very widely used. The odds of TP-LINK equipment being in
any given home or business is significant because they are such a
consumer favorite.
And, once again, the U.S. government is saying that security risks are
involved. Well at least this time we presumably can get the officials
making these accusations to provide some examples of their concerns
and ...
OH GEE, no we can't. Because just like with the accusations against
DJI, we're told there are security concerns but we're not shown
anything to back that up. We're told about "could be someday" and
"might be someday" and really it's the same story as the
justifications being used against DJI.
Now you might say, well maybe it's so serious the government just
can't tell us anything more. But that leads to the question of why
nobody else around the world is behaving this way in relation to DJI
or TP-LINK. Not England or Australia, or the EU, it seems to just be
us. And unless we assume those countries don't care about their
security -- and we have every reason to believe they do care -- it
does call into question this whole security-related line of
accusations.
And that makes many observers suspect that this really isn't about
security at all. So perhaps what's really going on is actually
protectionism, plain and simple. Now, we all want U.S. firms to be
competitive in these industries. So if they need help to do this, then
the government should consider helping them financially the way
various other countries' governments help their industries.
But don't wave around these security vulnerability claims without
evidence, especially when we seem to be alone in making these claims
and banning these products, when again, we know other countries care
very much about their own security just like we do.
It's not really showing a lot of respect to us for government
officials to make these accusations without backing them up with at
least some evidence, especially when a wide variety of equipment from
various U.S. manufacturers may have their own security issues from
time to time. It would be fairly useful in these kinds of situations
if the government didn't seem to insist on treating us -- as if we
were all idiots.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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