FCC Counters USTelecom CEO's' Call for Hill Intel Panels to Eye Title II Cyber 'Mission Creep'

The FCC disagreed with a letter from USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter urging the House and Senate Intelligence committees’ leaders to “pay special attention to the FCC’s mission creep into the cybersecurity space” because of the draft NPRM (see 2310160062). Although the commission “is already actively involved in federal interagency cybersecurity planning, coordination, and response activities, it has limited authority to incorporate updated cybersecurity standards into its network policies,” a spokesperson emailed us Monday. “A clear example of this is” the FCC’s Communications Act Section 214 authority, “which provides the agency with the ability to monitor and mitigate the existence of bad actors in telecommunication systems. That authority currently extends only to phone networks, not broadband. Similarly, the FCC has been closely working with other federal agencies on the best way to identify Broadband Gateway Protocol (BGP) vulnerabilities and mitigate risks, a process that would be strengthened through Title II reclassification by providing the agency with the clear and direct authority to act in close coordination with other agencies.”