Sec. 503. Prohibition on contracting with certain telecommunications providers
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Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall develop or maintain, as the case may be, and update as frequently as the Secretary determines appropriate, a list of covered contractors with respect to which the prohibition specified in subsection
(b)shall apply. Not later than 30 days after the initial development of the list under this subsection, any update thereto, and annually thereafter for 5 years after such initial 30 day period, the Secretary shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a copy of such list. The Secretary may not enter into a contract with a covered contractor on the list described in subsection (a). To be removed from the list described in subsection (a), a covered contractor may submit a request to the Secretary in such manner as the Secretary determines appropriate. The Secretary, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall determine a process for removing covered contractors from the list, as appropriate, and publicly disclose such process. The President or the Secretary may waive the prohibition specified in subsection
(b)if the President or the Secretary determines that such waiver is justified for national security reasons. The Secretary may waive the prohibition specified in subsection
(b)for United States diplomatic posts or diplomatic personnel overseas if the Secretary, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, determines that no suitable alternatives are available. In this section, the term covered contractor means a provider of telecommunications, telecommunications equipment, or information technology equipment, including hardware, software, or services, that has knowingly assisted or facilitated a cyber attack or conducted surveillance, including passive or active monitoring, carried out against— the United States by, or on behalf of, any government, or persons associated with such government, listed as a cyber threat actor in the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment of worldwide threats to United States national security or any subsequent worldwide threat assessment of the intelligence community; or individuals, including activists, journalists, opposition politicians, or other individuals for the purposes of suppressing dissent or intimidating critics, on behalf of a country included in the annual country reports on human rights practices of the Department for systematic acts of political repression, including arbitrary arrest or detention, torture, extrajudicial or politically motivated killing, or other gross violations of human rights. This section shall apply with respect to contracts of a covered contractor entered into on or after the date of the enactment of this Act.