'Tens Of Thousands' Of Fake Comments Submitted. New York State Attorney General Demands Answers From the FCC

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the attorney general for the New York State sent an open letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about fake comments submitted to the agency's online comments system. Eric T. Schneiderman directed his letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. It read in part:

"Recent press reports suggest that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under your leadership, soon will release rules to dismantle your agency’s existing “net neutrality” protections under Title II of the Communications Act, which shield the public from anti-consumer behaviors of the giant cable companies that provide high-speed internet to most people... Yet the process the FCC has employed to consider potentially sweeping alterations to current net neutrality rules has been corrupted by the fraudulent use of Americans’ identities — and the FCC has been unwilling to assist my office in our efforts to investigate this unlawful activity.

Specifically, for six months my office has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process through the misuse of enormous numbers of real New Yorkers’ and other Americans’ identities. Such conduct likely violates state law— yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed.

In April 2017, the FCC announced that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning repeal of its existing net neutrality rules. Federal law requires the FCC and all federal agencies to take public comments on proposed rules into account — so it is important that the public comment process actually enable the voices of the millions of individuals and businesses who will be affected to be heard. That’s important no matter one’s position on net neutrality, environmental rules, and so many other areas in which federal agencies regulate.

In May 2017, researchers and reporters discovered that the FCC’s public comment process was being corrupted by the submission of enormous numbers of fake comments concerning the possible repeal of net neutrality rules. In doing so, the perpetrator or perpetrators attacked what is supposed to be an open public process by attempting to drown out and negate the views of the real people, businesses, and others who honestly commented on this important issue. Worse, while some of these fake comments used made up names and addresses, many misused the real names and addresses of actual people... My office analyzed the fake comments and found that tens of thousands of New Yorkers may have had their identities misused in this way... Impersonation and other misuse of a person’s identity violates New York law, so my office launched an investigation... So in June 2017, we contacted the FCC to request certain records related to its public comment system that were necessary to investigate which bad actor or actors were behind the misconduct. We made our request for logs and other records at least 9 times over 5 months: in June, July, August, September, October (three times), and November.

We reached out for assistance to multiple top FCC officials, including you, three successive acting FCC General Counsels, and the FCC’s Inspector General. We offered to keep the requested records confidential, as we had done when my office and the FCC shared information and documents as part of past investigative work. Yet we have received no substantive response to our investigative requests. None."

According to an analysis by the New York State AG's office, "tens of thousands" of fraudulent comment were submitted affecting residents not only in New York but also in California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Clearly, this is both very troubling and unacceptable.

The FCC is supposed to accept comments without tampering and to weigh comments submitted by the public (e.g., consumers, businesses, technology experts, legal experts, etc.) equally to arrive at a decision based upon the majority of comments. If a sizeable portion of the comments submitted were fraudulent, then any FCC decision to kill net neutrality is (at best) both flawed and in error; and (at worst) illegal and undermines both the process and the public's trust.

AG Schneiderman's letter to the FCC is also available on the Medium site. It is most puzzling that the FCC and Chairman Pai have refused data requests since June. What are they hiding? The FCC must balance often competing needs of consumers and industry.

Consumers are very concerned about plans by the FCC to kill net neutrality. Consumers are concerned that their internet needs are not being addressed by the FCC, and that our monthly broadband costs will rise. There is so much concerns that protests are scheduled for December 7th outside Verizon stores. Killing net neutrality may be great for telecom and providers' profits, but it's bad for consumers.

Clearly, the FCC should not make any decisions regarding net neutrality, or any other business, until the fake comments allegations have been answered and resolved. And, an investigation should happen soon. As AG Schneiderman wrote:

"We all have a powerful reason to hold accountable those who would steal Americans’ identities and assault the public’s right to be heard in government rulemaking. If law enforcement can’t investigate and (where appropriate) prosecute when it happens on this scale, the door is open for it to happen again and again."

Democracy and consumers lose if the FCC kills net neutrality. What do you think?

Comments

[Chanson Roland]

The one good thing about Ajit Pai refusing to cooperate with New York’s investigation of identity theft and whoever the scoundrels are, who fraudulently impersonated the identities of at at least tens of thousands of Americans in comments that supported the elimination of net neutrality, is that they are giving those, who will attack Ajit Pai’s decision to overturn net neutrality in court, very powerful facts to attack Pai’s decisions on procedural grounds as a violation of FCC procedures and federal administrative law, in addition to attacking Pai’s decision to overturn net neutrality substantively as a violation of the Adminsitrative Procedure Act.

[George]

Update from Bloomberg:

"Someone was trying to game the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s electronic public comment system on net-neutrality rules... A study has found more than 7.75 million comments were submitted from email domains attributed to FakeMailGenerator.com, and they had nearly identical wording. The FCC says some of the nearly 23 million comments on Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to gut Obama-era rules were filed under the same name more than 90 times each. And then there were the 444,938 from Russian email addresses, which also raised eyebrows, even though it’s unclear if they were from actual Russian citizens or computer bots originating in the U.S. or elsewhere."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/fake-views-444-938-russian-emails-among-suspect-comments-to-fcc

George
Editor
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