FCC Could Impose Cybersecurity Rules Tied to USF: Pai

The FCC should consider imposing cybersecurity rules tied to USF support, similar to what the regulator did on insecure network equipment from China (see 2012100054), said former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai during a Hudson Institute virtual event Friday. Pai was interviewed by former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth.

Pai sees some hope for targeted cybersecurity legislation this year. “I’m hopeful that this is one of the rare oases from some of the partisanship bickering that we have typically seen in Washington,” he said. The FCC needs to give Congress technical assistance and briefings on the issue to encourage action, he said.

The FCC has the tools to act on cybersecurity under the USF, Pai said. “If you’re expending funds for a critical purpose, then you should have the right to condition that on abiding by certain basic regulations when it comes to cybersecurity,” he said. “I don’t think that’s unreasonable” and it would be permissible under the Communications Act, he said.

The FCC will likely take up revamped net neutrality rules, but Pai said he sees little public sentiment that the commission must do something. “The average person out there is thinking, ‘Wow, what on earth were we so concerned about,’” he said. People understand that despite dire warnings in 2017 when the FCC rolled back the 2015 rules after a bruising battle (see 1712140039), the internet remains “open and free.”

“It is truly incredible how much effort and time has been spent on this issue,” Pai said. “In the lives of millions of online consumers this is not something that ever affects their online experience. … It’s really unfortunate.” The FCC’s job isn’t to “micromanage harms that haven’t even materialized,” he said. “I have never quite understood why so much angst has been poured into this issue,” he said: “This is an article of religious faith among a few activists here in Washington” who will “badger the new FCC, once fully constituted, into reinstating” the 2015 rules.

Pai said unlike in 2017, Communications Decency Act Section 230 and the role of tech platforms will be part of the net neutrality debate. ISPs have to abide by a transparency requirement, describe their network management practices and disclose basic parts of their plans, he said: “Why shouldn’t tech platforms have to do the same thing?”

Rules for tech platforms are “probably not going to happen in the current administration,” Pai said: “It’s something that the current commission probably would not want to tackle because Congress is debating it.” Pai said he tried to take on the issue but ran out of time.

The U.S. needs national privacy guidelines because now the rules are based on those in California’s privacy law and the EU’s general data protection regulation, Pai said. “No particular state should have a de facto national regulatory regime,” he said. “Here, too, it has always been bogged down on Capitol Hill, it doesn’t seem to go anywhere,” he said: “I tend to be skeptical that anything is going to happen.”

On 5G, Pai said “one of the less heralded, but nonetheless vital” things the FCC did while he was chairman was cutting red tape to encourage deeper fiber penetration. “Fiber is necessary to backhaul all that traffic into the core of wireless networks,” he said. As a result, the U.S. saw new records in fiber deployment every year starting in 2018, he said.