The GAO Says It Will Investigate Bogus Net Neutrality Comments, Eventually

from the fake-people-real-problems dept

The General Accounting Office (GAO) says the agency will launch an investigation into the fraud that occurred during the FCC's rushed repeal of net neutrality rules. Consumers only had one real chance to weigh in during the public comment period of the agency's misleadingly-named "Restoring Internet Freedom" proposal. But "somebody" paid a group or individual to fill the comment period with bogus comments from fake or even dead people, in a ham-fisted attempt to downplay massive, legitimate public opposition to the plan.

The FCC then blocked a law enforcement investigation into the fraud, refusing to hand over server logs or API key data that could easily disclose the culprit(s). FOIA requests and public requests for help (one coming from myself) were also promptly ignored by the Trump FCC.

To help speed things along, the GAO says it will launch an investigation into the bogus comments and the FCC's response to them, though they warn in a letter that it may be at least five months before they have the staff and resources for such an inquiry:

"Thank you for your letter, jointly signed by a number of your colleagues, requesting that the Government Accountability Office review the extent and pervasiveness of fraud and the misuse of American identities during federal rulemaking processes. GAO accepts your request as work that is within the scope of its authority. At the current time we anticipate that staff with the required skills will be available to initiate an engagement in about five months."

The GAO is also currently investigating apparently bogus claims by the FCC that it suffered a malicious "DDOS attack" the same day HBO's John Oliver drove millions of frustrated citizens to the FCC website to chime in on its blatant hand out to the telecom sector. Both the fake comments and the fake DDOS attack appear to be an attempt to undermine trust in the millions of consumers viciously-opposed to the FCC's plan. Both will also play a starring role in the numerous lawsuits headed the FCC's direction for its blatant disregard of the public interest.

If the GAO or these lawsuits can prove the FCC ignored agency guidelines and the Administrative Procedure Act in its rush to cuddle up to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, the agency's repeal could prove short lived. That's a major reason why ISPs like Comcast and AT&T are pushing hard for new fake net neutrality legislation that would codify federal apathy into law, pre-empting federal and state efforts to restore the rules--or craft tougher restrictions down the road.

Filed Under: fake comments, fcc, gao, net neutrality

Two Separate Studies Show That The Vast Majority Of People Who Said They Support Ajit Pai's Plan... Were Fake

from the fake-news dept

The fact that the FCC comments for Ajit Pai's net neutrality repeal were stuffed with fake comments is nothing new at all. We first reported on it back in May, and reports of comments from totally fake people or long dead people continue to pop up. Even worse are multiple stories of people having their own identities used to file comments, often opposed to their own views. The FCC has consistently responded that it doesn't care. New York's Attorney General has been investigating this as fraud, and asked the FCC to delay its net neutrality repeal until after the investigation was complete -- a request the FCC completely ignored. And, as we just noted a little while ago, Schneiderman recently announced that he's found over 2 million fake comments.

But it's easy to say "well, all these fake comments mean all the comments can be ignored." But it's important to look at the source of these fake comments and on which side they ended up. And just this week two new studies have come out, both taking a really deep dive into the fake comments. The Wall Street Journal did an investigation and reached out to 2,757 people who had supposedly commented. 72% of them said they had not posted the comments.

But even more thorough and more interesting is a new report that just came out this morning, from Startup Policy Lab's "Truth in Public Comments" project. Its methodology was even more thorough than the Wall Street Journal's. It took a random sample of 450,000 public commenters, and asked them "did you submit the comment quoted below to the FCC, yes or no?" The results are astounding:

88% of survey respondents whose emails were used to submit pro-repeal comments replied, “no,” that they did not submit the comment . Conversely, only 4% of pro-net neutrality respondents said that they did not submit the comment attributed to them.

Let's unpack that again to make it clear. Out of a fairly massive sample of FCC commenters nearly all of the ones supporting Pai's plan were fake. And nearly all of the ones supporting the existing rules were real. Here, see it in graphical form:

And this happened across multiple samples that the TiPC project ran. Each time, it showed that nearly all of the support for Pai's plan was fake. And nearly all the support for existing rules was real.

Also, quite telling: in sending out these emails asking people whether or not they filed, most of the responses they got came from people who supported net neutrality. The response rate among those who supported Pai? Tiny. Because most of them appear to be fake.

This is not to say that there weren't fake comments in support of the old rules. They did exist. But as the TiPC report notes, the "fakes" in support of the old rule were fairly obvious -- using obviously fake emails and names. The comments in support of Pai, while fake, used real emails and names that tried to appear real:

The FCC received spam comments that supported both the pro-net neutrality and pro-repeal. The difference, however, is that the majority of spam comments associated with email addresses supporting pro-net neutrality were ignored by the FCC because they were obviously fake. Conversely, we must conclude that the spam comments associated with email addresses that supported pro-repeal email addresses were a deliberate campaign to evade the eyes of regulators and influence the rulemaking process.

The discrepancy rests in the nature of the bounceback of emails. The survey resulted in a high bounce rate for emails associated with pro-net neutrality using unsophisticated approaches. Examples of an unsophisticated spam comment are those the FCC acknowledged are, “[o] bviously, fake comments [...] by the Flash, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Superman are not going to dramatically impact our deliberations on this issue. ”

By contrast, it appears that the spam comments for emails associated with pro-repeal comments reflect deliberate action to use stolen identities. In these instances, millions of Americans may have had their identity harvested for the political objectives of supporting the repeal of net neutrality laws, regardless of whether that individual agreed with the position or even had a position on the proposal. Accordingly, unlike the submission from Batman, which the FCC was correct to ignore, millions of Americans had their voice taken and repurposed without their consent.

No matter where you stand on the question of net neutrality, this should be a major concern. Public commenting is important, but when the system is totally hijacked in a way that appears designed to deliberately skew or merely taint the results, it does no one any good at all.

Filed Under: ajit pai, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality

The FCC Insists It Can't Stop Impostors From Lying About My Views On Net Neutrality

from the simply-Comcastic dept

So we've been talking for months now about how the Trump FCC has quite intentionally turned a blind eye to fraudulent comments being posted to the agency's net neutrality proceeding, since the lion's share of these bogus comments support the agency's plan to gut the popular consumer protections. Numerous people say they've had their identities lifted by somebody that has used a bot to populate the agency's comment system with hundreds-of-thousands of fake comments supporting the telecom-industry backed effort. Calls by these folks (and a few Senators) for an investigation have been simply ignored.

I'm among the folks that had their identities used to generate bogus support for killing the rules. My case is, however, a bit more tailored and personal. Back in April, somebody posted this comment to the FCC comment system pretending to represent me and one of the websites I write for. In it, my obtuse doppleganger falsely claims I run an unlicensed political PAC, then proceeds to prattle through a series of repeatedly, painstakingly debunked claims about how the agency's arguably-modest rules somehow stifle investment, harm orphans, and damage the time-space continuum:

"I operate an unregistered PAC at DSLREPORTS.COM. We have found that the Obama administration's Title II order has diminished broadband investment, stifled innovation, and left American consumers potentially on the hook for a new broadband tax. Furthermore, under the Obama administration, the Wheeler FCC presided over a model whereby Internet competition has been stifled, and an unprecedented concentration of market power was allowed to occur with the Charter merger. Many unhappy users can attest to that on my political action website (DSLREPORTS.COM). I urge the Commission to roll back the failed Title II provisions and return the Internet to the people."

As somebody that has spent the better part of twenty years advocating for a healthy and open internet, this is obviously a little irritating, even if, by itself, I'm not egotistical enough to think it makes a difference one way or the other. But it is part of an over-arching and obvious trend at the FCC to try and dilute the value of public input on this proceeding, since they're well aware net neutrality has broad, bipartisan support (something yet another survey highlighted this week).

So, at the tail end of May I began filing complaints with the FCC's website administrators, and asking the agency's PR department to explain why they're doing nothing about the pile of bogus comments (some of which originate from dead people) spoiling what should be a simple democratic exercise. After repeated requests for comment, the agency said on June 2 that it had at least received my complaint, and would eventually get back to me. Another month passed -- and after several more prods this week I received this letter from G. Patrick Webre (pdf), acting chief of the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.

While the letter contains numerous paragraphs, none of them actually say all that much -- except the part that tries to claim the agency is forbidden from somehow modifying or editing public proceeding comments:

Once filed in the FCC's rulemaking record, there are limits on the agency's ability to delete, change, or otherwise remove comments from the record. Doing so could undermine the FCC's ability to carry out its legal obligation, which is which is to respond to all significant issues raised in the proceeding.

To that end we continue to encourage you and all members of the public to submit comments to the FCC via ECFS (electronic comment filing system) that include accurate identifying information. This will ensure that the record reflects your views. You are welcome to include your correspondence on this matter -- including a statement that the comment you reference were not filed by you -- in ECFS for the public record.

While the FCC claims it faces "limits" on its ability to modify or delete comments, I've spoken to several former FCC staffers and one telecom industry lawyer unfamiliar with any such restrictions, especially when it applies to outright and obviously-fraudulent comments. A request to the FCC for a specific definition of these legal limits -- and a request for the IP address in question -- have yet to be responded to. The other problem is that the FCC is basically saying it doesn't care about any of this, informing users that have had their identities used to root against their own best self interests that they should just re-file new comments.

If you're thinking these comments don't really matter (which is clearly what the current FCC thinks), you'd be wrong. The 4 million comments filed during these rules' creation in 2015 helped shift former FCC Boss Tom Wheeler's thinking away from what would have originally been a potentially-legally unsupportable position, and toward classification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II. The comments also matter when it comes time to defend the policies in court, since they go a long way toward documenting whether the agency is actually supporting the public interest -- or just mindlessly being dictated to by deep pocketed incumbents.

In the broader context of the bogus bot issue -- we're at best witnessing outright apathy to identity theft and abuse of the FCC website -- and at worse an attempt to discredit legitimate opposition to FCC policy by effectively sanctioning fraudulent behavior. That's a curious policy decision for an FCC boss that has repeatedly claimed to be a stickler for professionalism and transparency. You have to think that if I began submitting copyright-violating missives -- or a hundred comments professing to be Ajit Pai or some other high-ranking FCC official -- the response would be notably...different.

And while the FCC may think it's immeasurably clever to quietly encourage illusory support for its attack on net neutrality, the agency's decision could prove problematic for it down the line.

After the public comment period, the agency is expected to vote again to finalizing dismantling the rules. After that will come the inevitable lawsuits by startups and consumer advocates. Pai and friends already faced a challenge in convincing the courts the broadband market changed substantively enough to warrant such a draconian and unpopular policy reversal. Now, net neutrality supporters may have some additional ammunition when it comes time to pointing out flaws in the FCC process, and how an agency that's supposed to represent the public interest -- pretty clearly doesn't.

Filed Under: ajit pai, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality

Report Falsely Blames The EFF For Fraudulent Net Neutrality Comments

from the extremely-greasy-shenanigans dept

So we've discussed at length how somebody is gaming the FCC's comment system, using a bot to post hundreds of thousands of fake comments in support of the agency's plan to kill net neutrality. We've also made it pretty clear that the FCC doesn't appear interested in doing much about this, because these bogus (and in some instances dead) people "support" the FCC's plan to gut consumer protections governing the already uncompetitive broadband market.

I've had some first-hand experience with the FCC's apathy, given I've been trying to get them to remove (or even address) a post supporting the death of net neutrality made in my name, falsely claiming I run an "unregistered PAC" and am upset that Title II "diminished broadband investment, stifled innovation, and left American consumers potentially on the hook for a new broadband tax" (none of which is true, it should go without saying). While the agency says it's looking into my complaint, you simply don't get the sense that tackling public proceeding comment fraud will be a top agency priority anytime soon.

Initial analysis of the FCC comments suggest it's largely the anti-net neutrality side that's been engaged in chicanery at any real scale. But in an obvious attempt to try and deflate that media narrative, there's a growing attempt to insist that massive, industrialized abuse of the FCC's net neutrality comment docket is something both sides are engaged in. For example, a report released last week (pdf) by the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) policy and lobbying think tank proclaimed that "hundreds of thousands" of bogus pro net neutrality comments were filed with the FCC, most of them coming from the EFF.

A report over at the Daily Caller quickly parroted the report's findings:

"More than 100,000 comments supporting government regulation of the internet appear to have been automatically submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a left-leaning nonprofit, according to a forensic analysis published Wednesday.

The responses likely did not come organically from real people, which the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) forum for public comment on net neutrality is intended to be for, according to The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC). Rather, the NLPC claims the comments seem to be artificially submitted by the EFF since language used is highly similar to EFF’s submission platform and both the email addresses and the physical addresses of the listed people are fake, or don’t exist.

But in an amusing takedown over at the EFF website, the group calls the NLPC's analysis "false" and "flawed." The original NLPC report claims that the EFF used the agency's own Dear FCC form letter website to file around 100,000 comments using fake names and e-mail addresses. But the EFF dissected its own data from this period to highlight that this claim simply wasn't true:

"So how do we know NLPC’s report is wrong? For one thing, we counted the number of comments people have submitted to the FCC through our system. That number is nowhere near the 100,000 comments NLPC said we filed.

Further, just before the sunshine period—when the FCC stopped accepting comments—we started storing copies of comments submitted through our system, because we weren’t sure how the FCC would treat comments submitted during that period. This week, we searched through all of the stored comments for the names and email address domains listed in NLPC’s report, and didn’t find a single match."

Additional analysis of the data found that whoever did submit the 100,000 or so comments, didn't even use the EFF's own tool. An errant apostrophe (the FCC's system uses "right single quotation marks" while the submitted comments used a neutral "typewriter apostrophe") indicates the text was copied and pasted from the EFF site, but wasn't submitted from the EFF's tool itself:

"Why does the difference matter? Because it shows that whoever submitted the 100,000 identical comments the NLPC report mentions copied and pasted the text to make the comments look like they came through EFF’s DearFCC.org site, when they did not. If NLPC had looked closely at the comments they would have noticed the difference, and realized that the comments weren’t generated by EFF’s website. Apparently, they did not."

So according to the EFF's analysis, someone cut and pasted a part of the EFF's own form letter, then submitted it using fake names, e-mail addresses and physical addresses more than 100,000 times. Now it's entirely possible that somebody in favor of net neutrality thought they were "helping" by engaging in this behavior (though given the rules' popularity, it's not really necessary). But it's also entirely possible (having watched telecom lobbyists for the better part of two decades) that someone did this as an attempt to make net neutrality supporters look bad, and overshadow media reports of the bot being used to stuff the ballot box.

You'll note that the lobbying and policy think tank behind the report, the National Legal and Policy Center, opposes net neutrality -- and didn't make so much as a peep over the last few months as someone used a bot to fill the FCC comment system with bogus support for the FCC's plan to kill net neutrality. But in a blog post discussing their findings, the group is quick to lambaste the EFF for violating consumer privacy, despite what pretty clearly wound up being some deeply flawed analysis:

"For groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation that claim to champion consumers’ online privacy, it would be an unprecedented privacy breach if they knowingly culled other people’s email addresses from spam databases and without their consent falsely submitted comments into the docket,” Flaherty continued. “At this point, the full extent of the problem is unclear, but it definitely deserves further investigation."

And when the EFF made it clear the comments didn't come from its system and the group had no part in filing them, the NPLC had a rather unique interpretation of the EFF's statement:

So again, there's two options here: someone supporting net neutrality took the time to try and pad the numbers by cutting and pasting the EFF's form letter into the comment system, using fake names and e-mail addresses. Or, someone opposing net neutrality used the EFF's form letter to try and frame the group for falsely stuffing the ballot box, further eroding trust in the validity of the FCC process. And given the lion's share of legitimate comments support keeping the rules intact, this latter possibility offers some obvious benefits to net neutrality opponents.

Hopefully we'll see some additional, independent and professional analysis of the data down the road. Either way, as with my own experiences above, this could all be prevented by the FCC actually giving a damn and policing abuse of its own comment system. As the EFF quite correctly notes, refusing to do so will only work to discredit the quality of the legitimate comments being made ahead of the final vote to kill the consumer protections later this year.

Filed Under: comments, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality, open internet
Companies: eff, nlpc

Consumers Who Had Their Identities Stolen By A Spam Bot Demand FCC Investigate Bogus Net Neutrality Comments

from the industrial-chicanery dept

Shortly after the FCC voted to begin killing net neutrality earlier this month, we noted how a mysterious bot began spamming the FCC comment system with posts favoring the dismantling of net neutrality. Analysis of the bot indicates it has simply been pulling names from a hacked database of some kind, posting the same exact missive over and over again. The scale of the informational assault isn't subtle; one estimate suggests that more than 40% of the nearly 3 million comments filed so far are courtesy of this bot, the operator of which still hasn't been identified.

The original report detailing this bot activity actually managed to get a hold of many of the people whose names are being used, and confirmed that these folks never left comments at the FCC website -- and in many instances have no idea what net neutrality even is. In some instances, many of the supposed anti-net neutrality commenters are no longer, well... living:

It is uncertain how these individuals' personal information was obtained, but it appears that a significant portion of the names and addresses used to post these comments were culled from government files stolen during a number of different network breaches over the years. Many of the addresses associated with these people's names are outdated, and according to the digital rights group Fight for the Future, in at least two cases a comment was filed to the FCC's website by people who recently died.

People who aren't dead and had their names used in this fashion aren't particularly happy about it. Net neutrality activist group Fight for the Future recently launched a website letting users test to see if their name is being used in such a fashion. And they followed that up with a letter to the FCC, signed by more than two-dozen people whose names have been (ab)used in this fashion, urging the FCC to discard the obviously fraudulent comments and help investigate who's behind the campaign:

"Based on numerous media reports [2], nearly half a million Americans may have been impacted by whoever impersonated us in a dishonest and deceitful campaign to manufacture false support for your plan to repeal net neutrality protections. While it may be convenient for you to ignore this, given that it was done in an attempt to support your position, it cannot be the case that the FCC moves forward on such a major public debate without properly investigating this known attack."

But that's precisely the problem. Because the phony bot comments support the FCC's frontal attack on net neutrality, there's every indication that the FCC intends to do nothing about any of this. And when the final vote comes to a pass later this year, you can be sure that these comments will either be used as evidence of support for the FCC's large ISP-serving policies, or be used to suggest that the massive outpouring of support for the agency's 2015 rules should be disregarded entirely.

The FCC is scheduled to continue fielding comments on its plan to kill net neutrality until August 16. If you're a living, breathing human being, you can add your thoughts to the proceeding here.

Filed Under: bots, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality, spam, spam bot

The FCC Doesn't Care That Somebody's Spamming Its Net Neutrality Proceeding With Fraudulent Comments

from the turning-a-big-blind-eye dept

As we recently noted, more than 40% of the 2.5 million comments filed with the FCC on net neutrality are entirely fake. The comments, which oppose net neutrality, have been posted using a bot that's pulling the names used from a hacked database of some kind. When the people that own the actual names behind these comments have been contacted by the media, many have stated they didn't make the comments, and/or have no idea what net neutrality even is.

In an ideal world, the FCC would easily parse out these obviously fraudulent, duplicate comments and shore up the abuse of its API. But because these comments support the current FCC's belief that meaningful net neutrality protections are somehow an assault on "American freedom," the FCC appears poised to completely disregard the fact that a malicious actor is manipulating the FCC's systems. The FCC isn't candidly admitting this, but FCC boss Ajit Pai's non-statements and statements alike so far indicate he's inclined to include the obviously fraudulent comments:

"The FCC didn’t respond to repeated requests to specifically say whether it would filter out the astroturfed comments. Speaking to reporters after announcing a step toward rolling back existing net neutrality protections, FCC Chair Ajit Pai admitted “a tension between having an open process where it’s easy to comment and preventing questionable comments from being filed.” “Generally speaking, this agency has erred on the side of openness,” he said."

When pushed, FCC officials have said they'll purge comments made under obviously phony names, but isn't willing to comment further on the obvious blind eye to manipulation of the comment system:

"Pai said the agency wouldn’t consider comments with obviously fake names, like Wonder Woman and Joseph Stalin, but declined to go further. Reached for comment after Pai’s statement, an FCC official declined to comment specifically on astroturfed comments. "You heard his answer on erring on the side of inclusion," the official said.

And again, the FCC is turning a blind eye to this fraudulent behavior because actual humans overwhelmingly oppose what Pai and friends are up to. Recent analysis of the comments made so far to the FCC indicate the vast, vast majority of consumers -- across all political ideologies -- don't want the agency gutting meaningful oversight of the already uncompetitive broadband sector. That could be problematic later this year, when Pai faces inevitable lawsuits over his rush to kill the protections despite no corresponding market necessity, and the broad public support for the rules.

Filed Under: fake comments, fcc, net neutrality, trolls