Next up, foreign VPNs and shortwave radios are illegal to use.
Then phone calls are restricted.
Then international mail has to be inspected and censored.
All hail Chairman Trump!
USA USA ππΊπΈπ₯
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
683 points (99.6% liked)
Technology
83027 readers
3550 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2026/PSA260312
Compromised devices already comprise what amounts to a foothold within US network infrastructure that makes attribution of actors and defense of critical infrastructure impossible.
It's actually a really good situation for China since they have access to millions of these compromised devices in police stations, fire stations, hospitals, within critical infrastructure networks etc.
Also, the equivalent of mail censorship is already being done by more subtle means.
The US is more fucked than you know. I just hope the US doesn't piss china off too much. The asymmetric warfare will claim more lives of civilians than combatants.
Unintentionally shutting down ai data centers. Lol, we know this will only be selectively enforced!
Well it does say consumer-grade. Not sure what the reasoning there is, as backdoors in enterprise equipment would be much worse for national security
enterprise equipment manufacturers have already paid the bribe.
You're absolutely right. Legalese makes fools of us all.
I can understand the FTC being involved because trade. But the FCC? Maybe regulatory authority over WiFi? But this seems like massive over reach.
Remember when conservatives claimed to support smaller government?
How about the bit where they say home routers have to be approved by the DHS or the "Department of War"? This is not normal.
They still do claim that, but every federal republican administration since I have been born has spent more than it brought in, and has a less fiscally conservative record than every administration from the other major party, whom they tarred as fiscally irresponsible the entire time. I am almost 50.
Remember when conservatives claimed to support smaller government?
I only remember when conservatives lied everytime they opened their mouths.
I mean... "Small government" Republicans were always demonstrably lying, as far back as any of them have been alive. Every one of them just wanted to shift money from things that support people to the pockets of their donors.
I have done a couple similar setups. Fun facts: cell towers have asymmetrical signal and if you are too close, your signal is bad. Those are hard ones to explain to farmers that have towers installed on their properties.
The excuse that it's for security reasons just immediately falls apart when you get to this part of the article:
The notice from the FCC states that companies can apply for conditional approval for new products from the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security. However, that requires the businesses to provide a plan for shifting at least some of their manufacturing to the US in order to receive that conditional approval.
So it's fine to supposedly threaten national security if you do some more manufacturing in the US? Uh-huh. How does that balance out exactly?
The unwritten part is where Trump gets a free gold plated golf cart or some other stupid shit to sweeten the deal.
Its grift allllll the way down.
I hate to say anything that would defend any of this, but cheap Chinese routers are very prone to security issues. There's a guy that has a youtube channel built arond taking apart and reverse engineering all kids of electroncis. He's found some pretty bad stuff in generic routers, static logins, telemetry sent home, remote executable code in the admin portal while not logged in.
I agree there's a lot more here they hope to gain, and that those gains are their primary objective, but there are some real issues from consumer network electronics.
That may be true and is certainly a well known concern β¦. Yet given the US governmentβs recent history, I have a hard time believing much of what they say
Cheap Chinese routers as a risk being true doesnβt prevent it from also being true that the current us administration is full of shit and likely more concerned about enriching someone connected to them, or tilt at windmills
There's better ways to do it then, EU don't have that problem for example, and we buy plenty from China.
We just have safety and security standards enshrined into law, and don't deal with anyone that doesn't agree to follow them.
It's why some products have the C⬠symbol on them, which is "this has been imported, and meets all legal requirement", and all shops are not allowed to sell anything without that cert if imported.
(Though this don't apply to direct delivery from other nations, so it's not bulletproof)
load more comments
(4 replies)
If I read this right it goes beyond the cheap no-name Chinese stuff that we hopefully all know to avoid by now. This would prevent US companies from outsourcing manufacture to foreign countries, which pretty much all companies do at this point
That would keep routers.ca from reselling Temu routers, net win.
I just hope that part of this doesn't include mandatory backdoors for US agencies. This might be the start of the great firewall of the US
it will
if that ends up being the case, us linux nuts can start making and selling our own routers!
Side Hustle!
until that has you labeled as a terrorist
They'll nail us to the wall for using lemmy before they nail us for making routers :)
In the Age of Technology and AI, it does make sense to have any manufacturing operations in house than overseas. Ofc if there were countries we could trust that would be onpar as well, but the U.S. pretty much shit the bed on alliances.
Sounds like it's just a modern version of Indulgences to me.
You have all sinned against ~~God~~ America, but if you pay the donation to the ~~church~~ government then you will be given access to ~~heaven~~ America
Build your own open WRT router or get one of theirs. It's the best way to go and you don't get dragged through the monthly fee wringer for stupid child security or other stuff that is not well designed.
If you're building your own router I'd recommend OPNsense. I hear PFsense is also good.
Yea but the n100 I got to run it was made in China. I think I'm breaking the law now π€£
Use openwrt.
The only explanation that makes sense to me is that this is a law to:
- get bribes or favors from telecom equipment manufacturers.
- Create a framework to force backdoors into consumer equipment.
- Force users to use ISP provided equipment.
Create a framework to force backdoors into consumer equipment.
Ding ding ding
First thought upon seeing this headline. How long until we see the great firewall of USA?
load more comments
(2 replies)
TPLink needed to get their shit in order for years. This has been cooking since 2019. However, this administration is just turned it into a bribery scheme.
Even more isolationism. Knowing how the usa works, they discovered the equipment was set up for spying on their people and they want all of that "spying on their own people" power for themselves.
load more comments
(6 replies)
view more: next βΊ