§2679e List of Certain Telecommunications Providers

Summary

The Secretary must, after consulting the Director of National Intelligence and other federal agencies they agree on, create or keep a list of contractors the Department should try to avoid hiring. This must happen within 30 days after December 27, 2021, and the list can be updated as often as the Secretary thinks is needed. The Secretary must send a copy of the list to the relevant congressional committees within 30 days after first making it, within 30 days after any update, and once a year for five years after that first 30-day deadline. A "covered contractor" is a company that provides telecommunications or information technology products or services (including hardware, software, or services) that knowingly helped with a cyberattack or carried out surveillance. That includes attacks on the United States by governments named as cyber threats in the intelligence community’s 2017 worldwide threat assessment or any later such assessment, and actions taken to suppress or intimidate activists, journalists, opposition politicians, or others on behalf of countries listed in the State Department’s human rights reports for systematic political repression (for example, arbitrary arrest, torture, or extrajudicial killing).