§2679e List of Certain Telecommunications Providers

Summary

The Secretary must create (or keep and update) a list of companies the Department should try not to hire for telecom or IT work. The Secretary must do this within 30 days after December 27, 2021, working with the Director of National Intelligence and any other federal agencies they choose. The list can be updated as often as the Secretary thinks necessary. Within 30 days after the first list, after any update, and once a year for five years after that first 30-day period, the Secretary must send the list to the appropriate congressional committees. A "covered contractor" is a company that provides telecommunications, telecom equipment, or information technology equipment (including hardware, software, or services) that knowingly helped a cyberattack or carried out surveillance. That includes attacks or spying done against the United States by or for any government named as a cyber threat actor in the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment of worldwide threats to United States national security or any later worldwide threat assessment, or against people (like activists, journalists, or opposition politicians) to silence or intimidate critics on behalf of a country listed in the Department’s annual country reports on human rights practices for systematic political repression (for example, arbitrary arrest or detention, torture, extrajudicial or politically motivated killing, or other gross human rights violations).