brendan carr

India offers lessons for the world struggling to contain manifest cybersecurity threats from companies of Chinese origin or those linked to its political philosophy, US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Brendan Carr told ET, pointing to New Delhi’s pre-emptive action against entities posing both commercial and security challenges to an increasingly digital economy.In an exclusive interview, Carr, who is on his maiden India trip, said that India’s actions on the short-video platform TikTok and telecom…

India has set an “incredibly important precedent” by banning TikTok and is a ‘guide star’ for other countries, a top US official told ET. In view of the concerns over the Chinese short video app being a threat to “national security,” nothing short of a “blanket ban” — as imposed by India — will work, according to Brendan Carr, Commissioner of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In an exclusive interview with ET, Carr said “banning TikTok is a natural next step in our efforts to secure communication…

Alabama and Utah joined other US states prohibiting the use of Chinese-owned short-video sharing app TikTok on state government devices and computer networks due to national security concerns. The actions follow warnings from FBI Director Chris Wray last month who said the Chinese government could use the ByteDance-owned app to control data collection on millions of US users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations. "Disturbingly, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data, much of…

The US Federal Communications Commission is set to ban approvals of new telecommunications equipment from China's Huawei Technologies and ZTE in the United States on national security grounds, according to an agency document. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last week circulated the proposed ban to the other three commissioners for final approval. The companies would not be able to sell new equipment in the United States without equipment authorisations. "The FCC remains committed to protecting our national security by…

PayPal had to retract a change to its Acceptable Use Policy over the weekend for supposedly fining users for posting ‘misinformation.’ However, conservatives are being very selective in how they interpret PayPal’s AUP.Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)PayPal, the company co-founded by right-wing darling Peter Thiel, was caught in a firestorm of conservative backlash over the weekend for daring to say it would not allow its services to be used to promote misinformation. Now, the company has walked everything back, and…

Photo: OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP (Getty Images)TikTok executives are attempting to assuage Republican officials that U.S. data is safe and sound in company hands, but their best attempts are unlikely to make any of these GOP lawmakers stray from the warpath against the popular social app.The New York Times first reported that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew istrying to explain the company’s data policies to antagonistic lawmakers. Chew’s letter was in response to nine Republican senators who were calling on the company to answer to…

WASHINGTON—A federal communications regulator has asked Apple Inc. and Google to remove Chinese-owned TikTok from their app stores, citing the security risks posed by the data collected by the short-form video site on American users.“It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data,” Federal Communications Commission member Brendan Carr wrote in a letter to Apple and Google, a unit of …

Photo: Ascannio (Shutterstock)TikTok promises to keep its U.S. users’ data safe and sound are not satisfying at least one member of the Federal Communications Commission. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a blistering letter Wednesday that the Chinese company has proved it can’t be trusted with the informationusers give it, and should bundled up and tossed out the airlock.Carr posted an open letter sent to both Google and Apple on his Twitter account Tuesday. In it, he called on the companies to jettison the TikTok…

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday added Russia's AO Kaspersky Lab, China Telecom (Americas), and China Mobile International USA to its list of communications equipment and service providers deemed threats to US national security.The regulator last year designated five Chinese companies including Huawei and ZTE  as the first firms on the list, which was mandated under a 2019 law. Kaspersky is the first Russian company listed.FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said the new designations "will help secure our…