Senator urges immediate Senate consideration of S.2480 after report alleges major telecom cybersecurity failures

An unidentified senator told the Senate that an unclassified expert report titled "US telecommunications in security 2022" contains "shocking details" about cybersecurity failures at U.S. phone companies and urged immediate legislative action.

"Congress and the American people deserve to be able to read this report," the senator said, adding that the agency allowed staff to read the report in 2023 but marked it for official use only and refused public release in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. "This report contains shocking details," the senator said.

The senator said they asked then-Director Easterly to release the report and, when that did not occur, wrote to "president Bridal" in February 2024 urging action; the senator said the Biden administration took no action. The senator also said the agency's top telecommunications security expert filed a whistleblower complaint with the Federal Communications Commission after citing access to nonpublic reports and "very concerning information." According to the senator, that expert told the FCC of "numerous incidents of successful unauthorized attempts to access the network user location data of communication service providers operating in the United States," and said foreign surveillance included monitoring voice and text messages and the delivery of spyware to targeted devices.

The senator charged that a "multi year cover up" by the agency and telephone companies' failure to follow basic security practices enabled foreign hackers to "perpetrate one of the most serious cases of espionage ever against our ... country." The senator argued that carriers' failures to install security updates and use multifactor authentication were direct contributors to the intrusions.

"The agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have confirmed that the Chinese government hacked multiple phone companies and accessed vast troves of sensitive call records," the senator said, adding that attackers "even co-opted the system designed for law enforcement to conduct wiretaps and access phone calls of politicians and other high value targets." The senator cited press reporting and official statements as reporting that some high-level officials were targeted, saying "Vice President Vance said his communications and President Trump's were compromised in this hack" and that press reports named then-leader Schumer as a target.

The senator said the report, if it had been public in 2022, would have given Congress time to require mandatory cybersecurity standards for phone companies "in time to prevent the SALT typhoon hacks," and called it urgent to prevent future incidents. The speech repeatedly emphasized that federal agencies had not required minimum cybersecurity standards for U.S. phone companies and had not held companies accountable.

Concluding the remarks, the senator asked unanimous consent "that the Senate proceed with the immediate consideration of S.2480." The transcript provided ends with the unanimous-consent request; no vote or ruling on that request appears in the provided text.

What happened next: The speech in the transcript consists of a single senator's floor statement making a series of allegations, citing a whistleblower and agency inaction, and formally requesting immediate consideration of S.2480. The record supplied does not show any response, ruling, or vote on that request.