Trump declares emergency over IT threats

This is great news. The lack of the government seeming to care about national IT security has been bothering me for years now.

Sounds good. In reality this likely means Trump will abuse this power for some absurd changes and surveillance.

"The president signed an executive order effectively barring US companies from using foreign telecoms believed to pose a security risk to the country."

"Mr Trump does not name any company specifically in the order."

I'm guessing they are called emergencies as they await for the threat to emerge. Which kinda seems at odds with my definition of emergencies - which would be a defined clear-cut issue that needs addressing.

All this effectively does is hurt and curtail legit business with fair and good foreign telecom providers who have now been bundeled via red-tape into the same collection as those unnamed less fair and good foreign telecom providers.

Expect a fall-out of how this will hurt and impact legit businesses over the coming days and weeks. Let alone touch upon the possible impact upon Americans using their provider SIM and roaming abroad.

> The president signed an executive order effectively barring US companies from using foreign telecoms believed to pose a security risk to the country.

So let's just back up a little: A Chinese equipment manufacturer left a telnet daemon running on a single version of a single device and a national emergency is declared, Cisco leaves SSH credentials (public and private keys leaked) hard coded into multiple generations of routers over several years and not a peep..?

When is the US going to tell us what these Chinese manufacturers are up to? Heck when are they going to tell the UK's own security services? Just telling us why we should be concerned seems far more productive and effective than their current strategy that is marred by accusations of protectionism.

I'm not even saying the US are wrong. I am saying the lack of specific technical information undercuts their whole position.

The title (written by the BBC) seems to be ambiguous. This is not about hardening US computer systems, this is about banning US companies from using Huawei 5G technology. The United States has been lobbying other countries to not use Chinese 5G technology for a while now, while it doesn't seem like there are currently any viable alternatives. This makes it a nation-wide ban.