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Team Telecom, a shadowy US national security unit tasked with protecting America's telecommunications systems, is delaying plans by Google, Facebook and other tech companies for the next generation of international fiber optic cables.
Team Telecom comprises representatives from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice (including the FBI), who assess foreign investments in American telecom infrastructure, with a focus on cybersecurity and surveillance vulnerabilities.
Team Telecom works at a notoriously sluggish pace, taking over seven years to decide that letting China Mobile operate in the US would "raise substantial and serious national security and law enforcement risks," for instance. And while Team Telecom is working, applications are stalled at the FCC.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/18/how-us-national-security-agencies-hold-the-internet-hostage/
(Score: 1) by hwertz on Friday July 26 2019, @04:41PM (1 child)
Seems like it might be time to lay cable now, get permission later. I'm not even joking. If the gov't is uselessly slow about something like this, then fuck 'em. This isn't like starting up some new radio transmissions where it's may interfere with anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 26 2019, @09:58PM
That was tried back in the late nineties. The company was shut down for it. A sizable chunk of Google's fiber backbone was laid by that company.