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Trump security team sees building U.S. 5G network as option
President Donald Trump's national security team is looking at options to counter the threat of China spying on U.S. phone calls that include the government building a super-fast 5G wireless network, a senior administration official said on Sunday. The official, confirming the gist of a report from Axios.com, said the option was being debated at a low level in the administration and was six to eight months away from being considered by the president himself.
The 5G network concept is aimed at addressing what officials see as China's threat to U.S. cyber security and economic security. [...] "We want to build a network so the Chinese can't listen to your calls," the senior official told Reuters. "We have to have a secure network that doesn't allow bad actors to get in. We also have to ensure the Chinese don't take over the market and put every non-5G network out of business."
[...] Major wireless carriers have spent billions of dollars buying spectrum to launch 5G networks, and it is unclear if the U.S. government would have enough spectrum to build its own 5G network. [...] Another option includes having a 5G network built by a consortium of wireless carriers, the U.S. official said. "We want to build a secure 5G network and we have to work with industry to figure out the best way to do it," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Axios published documents it said were from a presentation from a National Security Council official. If the government built the network, it would rent access to carriers, Axios said.
Will it include "responsible encryption"?
Related: U.S. Lawmakers Urge AT&T to Cut Ties With Huawei
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:02PM (2 children)
There is an inconsistency here.
When talking about net neutrality I heard multiple calls for massive investments in nationwide broadband infrastructure. When 'the government' talks about doing that with 5g, the logical technology to build it, the entire internet panics.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:42PM
The reasons given for doing this don't make a sense.
That said, if the government builds and leases a huge 5G network or parts of one, users could use their own
responsibleend-to-end encryption to stay relatively secure from any built-in govt snooping.[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @03:53PM
Because 5G is not the wired (fiber) broadband we need. Only proprietary, user-subjugating, locked-down devices will connect to 5G. How many of those devices will support tethering? None? Also remember that the FCC is now dictating binary blobs because everybody uses software-defined radios.
The cell phone is Orwell's telescreen.