If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Senator Ron Wyden is, in protest, blocking the nomination of Sean Plankey to head the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), over CISA’s failure to publish an unclassified report detailing vulnerabilities in US telecommunications networks. Over the past years, CISA has come under scrutiny for departing from the declarative purpose – namely, protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks – and instead getting involved in censorship through Big Tech collusion. Now, Wyden is highlighting another problem with CISA, and this one is closer in nature to its original mission. The report that has become a stumbling block to Plankey’s confirmation dates back to 2022, and is titled, “US Telecommunications Insecurity 2022.” It was put together to address warnings about long-standing security issues in fixed and mobile networks – in the Signaling System Number 7 (SS7) and Diameter protocols. Because of these vulnerabilities, the US telecommunications infrastructure is believed to be exposed to remote spying and surveillance of wireless devices by foreign governments, including access to texts, calls, and location data. And while Wyden and his staff have been able to read the report at CISA’s premises, the agency refused, despite the senator’s insistence, to make it public. An attempt to secure this happened in February 2024, when the senator wrote to then-President Biden, and he also, according to what he told the Register, around the same time he unsuccessfully asked CISA Director Jen Easterly – who stepped down in January 2025 – to release the report. Wyden considers this an instance of CISA engaging in a “multi-year cover-up of the phone companies’ negligent cybersecurity” and has decided to tie the issue to Plankey’s confirmation in the Senate. According to the senator’s 2024 letter to Biden, both foreign governments and surveillance companies have been using the vulnerabilities covered by the 2022 document for at least a decade, gaining the ability to “track phones anywhere in the world.” One example of what Wyden calls real consequences of the negligent security practices deployed by US phone companies is the “Salt Typhoon” event, believed to have been organized by China, when a number of US telecoms suffered breaches, giving the attackers access to communications of high profile figures. One of them was JD Vance, at that time a vice presidential candidate. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Senator Ron Wyden Blocks CISA Nominee Sean Plankey Over Withheld Report on US Telecom Vulnerabilities and Surveillance appeared first on Reclaim The Net.