At a glance.
- Unclassified version of US 5G security guidance under preparation.
- Russia extends its Twitter slowdown.
- Are Big Tech breakups really that likely?
NSA preparing unclassified version of 5G guidance.
Breaking Defense says the National Security Agency is drafting an overview of “threats and risks to 5G infrastructure," set to be released by the end of next month. The resource will build off the efforts of the Enduring Security Framework (ESF), a collaboration between the Pentagon, NSA, Intelligence Community, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and private sector that safeguards critical infrastructure.
The ESF’s aim with respect to 5G is fourfold: boost threat modeling, in-network threat detection, recovery capabilities, and virtualization techniques. Recommendations center on “zero trust,” “standard bodies,” “spectrum management,” “secure code,” and “improved network resiliency and redundancy.” The NSA is also looking into how AI, machine learning, and data analytics can strengthen security measures. Since 5G will undergird critical economic and defensive structures while bloating the nation’s attack surface, NSA Executive Director Noble said the “stakes for securing this new technology could not be higher.”
Russia throttles Twitter.
Techdirt recalls the impact of Moscow’s 2016 surveillance law, which clamped down on VPNs and made backdooring compulsory, before turning to the country’s current “ham-fisted gamesmanship” against Twitter. The platform finds itself in hot water for insufficient censorship. Russia’s latest rebuke took the form of choking access speeds to 128 kbps, a move that seems to have swept up a number of residents’ mobile Internet connectivity. Middleboxes and deep packet inspection are apparently involved, raising additional worries of “a much more sophisticated tracking and censoring regime.” The good news is that roughly seven workarounds are available to interested parties.
Considerations on the likelihood of Big Tech breakups.
Foreign Policy finds the likelihood of a Big Tech breakup slim. US threats towards Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft amount to hot air in the face of judicial caution, expert and legislative disagreement, lukewarm political will, the companies’ role in the economy, and uncertainty about the firms’ fault lines. A conceptual disagreement about the meaning of ‘antitrust’ underlies some of the political tension: is the Government’s job to prevent companies from amassing too much power, or to protect consumers from evident harm?
The EU, for its part, is tending towards regulatory rather than antitrust remedies. The Wall Street Journal has an account of the UK’s new anticompetition custodian, Digital Markets Unit, for example, which is working on a “legally binding code of conduct” for tech giants.
Tech Policy Press argues that the path towards better consumer protections is paved with cracked business models. While paying lip service to noble ideals when they don’t cost too much, the piece argues, Big Tech as a rule brushes its data collection, ad targeting, and content promotion practices under the rug.