FFTF Calls For Net Neutrality Reversal Due To Fake Comments
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai recently confirmed that the FCC knew that its public comment system was broken during the long and controversial run up to the passing of the agency’s Title II net neutrality repeal, and now as a result of the American public not getting their say, Fight For The Future is calling for the repeal to be reversed. The comment system had no bot protection whatsoever, and a database containing millions of stolen names and addresses was used to create a massive number of fake comments, almost all in favor of dismantling Title II rules. The FCC has yet to officially respond to Fight For The Future’s statement.
The crux of the argument, according to Fight For The Future Deputy Director Evan Greer, is that the FCC must, by law, keep an open comment system for the public and keep it reasonably operational, including being free from issues that would undermine its effectiveness. During the proceedings, Pai openly said that the many comments opposing the repeal were outweighed by a small number of well-researched, well-thought out comments from big names that argued, alongside the FCC, that getting rid of the Obama-era legislation would open up innovation for internet service providers and incentivize investment. If Fight For The Future has its way, Congress could possibly reverse the repeal, pending a redo with a fully functional and well-maintained space for public comment.
Fight For The Future’s calls would ideally be answered through the Congressional Review Act, the same act that slowed down the repeal on its way through the government and almost stopped it in its tracks at one point. According to Pai, one of the ways his agency is planning to fix the comment system going forward is by putting a captcha system in place to keep bots from spamming the section with fraudulent comments. While this alone would not be quite enough to stop all of the fraudulent comments drowning out the many very real concerned voices, it would likely defeat enough of the bots to give the American people a fighting chance at showing that the repeal of the Title II rules is a massively unpopular vote, which of course goes against democracy at the most basic, principled level and would thus likely spurn some sort of intervention from other branches of government if the FCC attempted to proceed a second time.
nspectre on July 14th, 2018 at 06:49 UTC »
The Bots were not the problem. The FCC was the problem.
There are/were three ways to submit entries into the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS):
Individualized HTTP entry via the FCC website. Direct tokenized API access, so that websites could submit entries on behalf of their "Sign the Petition" visitors. Flat-file ASCII comma-delimited or Excel spreadsheet "Batch" processing.The first was Bot-able but self-limiting as it, combined with real people, bogged the ECFS down.
The second involved signing up with the FCC and obtaining a token you could use to submit entries from your website into the ECFS system. This should have effectively water-marked all submissions by each entity that signed up and received a token and it would be trivial for an FCC DBA to find tokens that were being misused. Submissions should show progressive Date and Time stamps indicating large volumes of entries over relatively short periods of time.
Batch processing is where thousands upon thousands of submissions could be submitted to the FCC in a batch and the FCC would themselves import them into the ECFS, all in one go, on behalf of the submitters. Batched submissions would likely all have the same Date & Time stamps.
Batch processing is where I suspect most of the malicious entries made it into the system. Why?
I conducted a review of my own using my own relatively common but-not-too-common Anglo [Firstname] [Lastname] and found hundreds of entries.
All of the entries with my [F/L] name I reviewed listed different addresses in different cities and states. Middle names were different.
All entries but a few professing ANTI-Net Neutrality views submitted one of two EXACT SAME BOILERPLATE comments.
ALL of those entries were tied (clumped) together with identical Date and Time stamps. Not progressive time stamps, showing individual entry over a relatively short period of time as one might expect if it were the work of bots and malicious tokenized API use. Identical time stamps. I didn't count how many submission groups there were, but it was extremely obvious they were processed in batches.
The very, very few ANTI-Net Neutrality submissions that were NOT boilerplate had completely random Date & Time stamps. As one would expect if individuals were making submissions via the FCC web site. All the comments were different and typical brain-dead "drank the flavoraid" anti-NN, anti-Obama nonsense.
The relatively few submissions professing PRO-Net Neutrality views bore completely random Date and Time stamps. As one would expect if individuals were making submissions via the FCC website. All the comments were different and personalized.
It is my belief that Ajit Pai's FCC was FULLY COMPLICIT in stuffing the ECFS with bogus anti-Net Neutrality entries.
And I'll say that to his face.
Furthermore, give me the data and I'll fucking prove it.
TBoarder on July 14th, 2018 at 04:28 UTC »
Fight for the Future is "just" a non-profit organization. It seems to have no actual power or governmental sway, and most of all has no money, so Ajit Pai will just ignore them like he's ignored everybody else demanding this. Will of the people, my ass.
Oryx on July 14th, 2018 at 03:32 UTC »
Along those lines and just curious: where is the investigation and subsequent charges against whoever orchestrated all that? It being a felony and all...