FCC blocks two gadgets over Huawei-linked ‘spy chip’
This is the first time the agency has used a power it gave itself on October 13. Because they carry chips made by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has blocked a dashboard camera and a wireless video transmitter from the American market.
The regulator calls the part a “foreign surveillance chip,” and neither device can now be marketed or sold in the US. FCC chairman Brendan Carr said such video devices “pose an obvious and unacceptable risk to the nation and our people. The agency has not said whether this exact chip sits inside both blocked products. The FCC has not said that either device sent data to Huawei.
The new rule lets it reject any gadget built around a chip from a company on its national security blacklist. The FCC has not named the brands or models of the two devices. It has, however, singled out HiSilicon’s Hi3516CV610 UHD Smart Vision SoC. This processor takes the raw feed from a camera sensor and turns it into a working home security camera, dashcam or similar device. The agency’s case leans heavily on HiSilicon’s own marketing. The company pitches the Hi3516CV610 as a chip made for the surveillance market, with face detection algorithms built in. The block rests on who made the chip.
The October 13 rule closes what the FCC describes as a component loophole. In plain terms, that covers chips running digital logic at more than 9,000 cycles a second.
Now the FCC can block any device using a “logic-bearing hardware component” from a listed company, if the full device would have been barred had that company built it. Passive parts such as housings, wiring, resistors and plain battery cells are left out.
Earlier, a device assembled and branded by a company not on the list could still win approval, even if a blacklisted firm made the parts doing the actual computing.