Ajit Pai Throws His Employees Under The Bus After Investigation Proves FCC Made Up DDOS Attack

from the ill-communication dept

You might recall that when HBO comedian John Oliver originally tackled net neutrality on his show in 2014, the FCC website crashed under the load of concerned consumers eager to support the creation of net neutrality rules. When Oliver revisited the topic last May to discuss FCC boss Ajit Pai's myopic plan to kill those same rules, the FCC website crashed under the load a second time. That's not a particular shock; given the massive public opposition to the repeal, and an FCC website that's never been accused of being cutting edge.

But things then got a bit weird. After the second attack last year, since-departed FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray issued a statement (pdf) claiming that FCC analysis showed the FCC had been the target of a DDOS attack by "external actors":

"Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos). These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC."

But the FCC's claims were seen as suspect by numerous security experts, who say the crash showed none of the usual telltale signs of an actual DDOS. Journalists then discovered the "analysis" the FCC supposedly conducted never actually took place. When media outlets began reporting that the FCC actually had zero evidence to support the DDOS claim, the FCC issued a punchy statement to multiple outlets accusing Gizmodo reporter Dell Cameron (who broke the story) of being "completely irresponsible":

"The FCC has never stated that it lacks any documentation of this DDoS attack itself. And news reports claiming that the Commission has said this are without any basis and completely irresponsible. In fact, we have voluminous documentation of this attack in the form of logs collected by our commercial cloud partners."

No evidence was ever provided to journalists or lawmakers that pressured the agency for hard data proving the claims. Because, we now know, no such evidence ever actually existed because no DDOS attack actually took place.

Eventually, e-mails obtained via FOIA request made it clear that the FCC CIO either made up the DDOS attack or misinterpreted legitimate Oliver viewer traffic as a malicious act. But those e-mails also made clear that Pai's FCC then pushed the DDOS attack narrative to numerous tech reporters, apparently in a bid to try and downplay the public's massive opposition to Pai's controversial policies. This act was only compounded by the FCC's refusal to seriously address the identity theft and fraud that polluted the repeal's comment period, the only real time consumers had a chance to have their voices heard.

Fast forward to this week. After a lengthy investigation into the whole idiotic affair, the FCC's Inspector General has released a report (pdf) again making it very clear that the FCC not only made up the DDOS attack, but repeatedly misled Congress when asked about it. The report notes how the FCC under Pai's watch "misrepresented facts and provided misleading responses to Congressional inquiries related to this incident," and that investigators were unable "to identify any evidence that FCC staff or contractors analyzed server logs or conducted any substantive analysis."

The FCC IG report notes that some of these false claims several FCC staffers made to Congress were passed on to the DOJ for an additional investigation, but the DOJ has thus far declined to follow through. The fact the press was also routinely misled (as discovered in FOIA-obtained e-mails) and fed false statements doesn't appear to have warranted much concern in the report.

Hoping to get out ahead of the pretty damning investigation, Ajit Pai issued a statement before the report was released throwing everybody but himself under the bus for the DDOS attack that wasn't:

"I am deeply disappointed that the FCC’s former Chief Information Officer (CIO), who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people. This is completely unacceptable. I’m also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn’t feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office.

If you're a kid just making your way into this brave, weird, world, blaming all of your employees is not what actual leadership looks like. You'll also be shocked to learn that Pai, who harbors post-FCC political ambitions, isn't being particularly truthful.

For one, Bray was hired under Wheeler but still served as Pai's CIO for a notable chunk of his early tenure, making his claims Pai's responsibility. Two, former FCC boss Tom Wheeler acknowledged recently he didn't believe the DDOS claim, yet Pai not only did -- but had PR staff double down on the claims. Pai also just floats over the fact that his office not only misled Congress, but repeatedly sold the DDOS claim to reporters as part of a bizarre bid to downplay public opposition. In reality, it now seems obvious Pai's FCC just didn't like the narrative of "millions of people are angry at the FCC for bad policy" that was bouncing around the media thanks to John Oliver, and thought doubling down on bullshit was an ingenious PR countermeasure.

In a statement of her own, Pai's fellow Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel got more to the point:

"The Inspector General Report tells us what we knew all along: the FCC’s claim that it was the victim of a DDoS attack during the net neutrality proceeding is bogus. What happened instead is obvious—millions of Americans overwhelmed our online system because they wanted to tell us how important internet openness is to them and how distressed they were to see the FCC roll back their rights. It’s unfortunate that this agency’s energy and resources needed to be spent debunking this implausible claim."

And in a statement to Gizmodo Senator Ron Wyden was blunter still:

"This report shows that the American people were deceived by the FCC and Chairman Pai as they went about doing the bidding of Big Cable. It appears that maintaining a bogus story about a cyberattack was convenient cover to ignore the voices of millions of people who were fighting to protect a free and open internet. Americans face higher prices for streaming services and other content as a result of Chairman Pai’s repeal of net neutrality protections, and it’s going to sting even worse knowing they were lied to about it by their government. The fact that Chairman Pai and the FCC came clean only after their story was debunked by the inspector general is disappointing, but it’s sadly unsurprising in this administration."

We'll see if anything even vaguely resembling accountability stems from the FCC's repeated efforts to mislead the press and public on this subject. And you can be sure this and the fake comments scandal will be popping up in the looming court fight over net neutrality. If nothing else, Pai's providing everybody with a stellar example of what ethical leadership doesn't look like, in case you needed yet another demonstration in 2018.

Filed Under: ajit pai, david bray, ddoc, fcc, made up

Journalist Totally Makes Up Story About GTA Based On Murderer, Then Attacks Video Gamers Who Called Him On It

from the professional-journalism dept

We've discussed a few times the various claims that many UK "news" publications have a history of totally fabricating stories. This seems odd, given the ridiculous libel laws in the UK, which you would think would keep that sort of thing to a minimum -- and yet we seem to hear similar stories quite frequently. The latest, sent in by EnJaySee, notes that the Daily Star (which is not a particularly well-respected paper) was caught totally making up a story pretending that the makers of Grand Theft Auto were working on a new version of the game, GTA Rothbury, based on Raoul Moat, the guy who killed shot his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend, a police officer and (eventually) himself -- successfully killing himself and the new boyfriend. The reporter, one Jerry Lawton, even went and asked the grandmother of Moat's ex-girlfriend what she thought of the game, and needless to say, she thought it was terrible. But there is no such game. There was a Photoshopped image, which appeared to be the basis of the story, but no one's quite sure where that came from.

Even worse, after various video gaming publications called out The Daily Star for such a bogus story, the paper deleted the article from its website with no explanation or correction or anything. It just pretended it never happened. Update: As pointed out in the comments, the Daily Star did eventually publish a full retraction and apology, only after this story started getting attention. But the "reporter," Jerry Lawton, apparently took to his Facebook page to lash out at those who caught his made up story and then mocked video game players:

"Baffled by the fury of adult gamers," he wrote. "These are grown (?!?) men who sit around all day playing computer games with one another who've today chosen to enter the real world just long enough to complain about my story slamming a Raoul Moat version of Grand Theft Auto! You would think I'd denied the Holocaust!!! Think I'll challenge them to a virtual reality duel....stab....I win!!!"

As Destructoid noted, Lawton seems to have selective understanding of the situation:

Nice to see that Lawton conveniently left out the bit where he used a poorly doctored image that any idiot could have ascertained was fake, the bit where he used a 69-year-old grieving grandmother for his own ends, and the bit where he cobbled together a shitty little article full of lies that got taken down because it was a load of crap. Hilarious that he references the "real world" when his article was based in total fantasy to begin with. Maybe Lawton's the one who needs to step away from his computer and face reality.

Filed Under: grand theft auto, jerry lawton, made up, raoul moat, reporting, uk

Does Freedom Of The Press In The UK Include Just Making Things Up?

from the ah,-but-we-keep-being-told-we-need-the-press dept

Personally, I've had pretty good experiences in dealing with the UK press, who have interviewed me on a few different occasions. I haven't found the experience to be particularly different than talking with the American press (or, frankly, the press from a number of other countries). I was aware that the UK press has, in general, more of a reputation for sensationalism, but in general I hadn't seen a huge problem. However, Jake points us to a couple of blog posts from a psychology professor discussing how one of the more respected UK publications apparently made up a story, claiming an American professor's research said something that it didn't come close to saying, and then didn't seem particularly interested in correcting it:

The article reported that "Researchers claim that blondes are more likely to display a "warlike" streak because they attract more attention than other women and are used to getting their own way -- the so-called "princess effect."" The Times article quotes the evolutionary psychologist at the University of California -- Santa Barbara, Aaron Sell, and his findings are purportedly published in his article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, written with the two Deans of Modern Evolutionary Psychology, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby.

As it turns out, however, none of this is true, as Sell explains in his angry letter to the Times. He and his coauthors do not mention blondes at all in their paper and they don't even have hair color in their data. The supplementary analyses that Sell performed after the publication of the paper, as a personal favor to the Times reporter, show the exact opposite of what the Times article claims. After he presumably listened to Sell explain all of this on the phone, the Times reporter nonetheless made up the whole thing, and attributed it to Sell.

Reading through the actual letter from Sell is really quite damning as he details one by one all of the false statements in the Times' article. Here's just a snippet (it goes on and on):

Mr. Harlow called to ask me about blonde women in particular. He said he was writing an article about blondes, and that he knew of other research showing that blondes feel more entitled. _I told him that my research did not look at blondes at all._ At his request, and as a courtesy to him, I reanalyzed our unpublished data to see if there was any relationship between being blonde and any variable I measured. There was not, and I told him so. (Although we had not taken hair color in the studies, being uninterested in it, I was able to recode the data retroactively based on photographs.)

Specifically, I told him, based on our data:

Blonde women do _not_ feel more entitled.
Blonde women are _not_ more prone to anger
Blonde women do _not_ feel more attractive than other women.
Blonde women are _not_ more militaristic.
(This last analysis about militarism controls for ethnicity, a necessary control because political attitudes are correlated with ethnicity and social class. Moreover, women of European ancestry constitute essentially the only ethnic group in the sample whose members could be blonde or not, and there is _no_ relationship among them between blondeness and attitudes toward use of the military. Any analysis of "blondeness" that does not control for ethnicity on questions about political attitudes creates the possibility that one could find a spurious correlation, because women of Asian and African-American ancestry (e.g.) are never blonde. I explained this to Mr. Harlow, and explained that this means _there is no evidence in my data that blondeness causes militaristic attitudes._)

The data aside, Mr. Harlow attributes statements to me, in quotation marks, that I have never said:

I have never published, researched, thought about, or used the phrase, "Princess Effect."
I did not refer to Southern California as the "homeland of the privileged blonde."
I never speculated on why blondes would be less likely to be in fights (which is not true anyway).
I have no evidence whatsoever on the effects of dying one's hair blonde.

Of course, it's also noted that Reporters Without Borders ranks the UK higher than the US when it comes to freedom of the press, leading the professor to claim that perhaps the UK press is a little too free when it feels comfortable making such totally unsubstantiated claims.

I'd be curious if some of our UK readers could weigh in on all of this, as it does sound a bit extreme. We're all familiar with newspapers twisting stories or getting facts wrong, but the description here seems a bit ridiculous. Also, as we well know, the UK has very strict libel laws, and it seems like outright lying could get a reporter in trouble pretty quickly, so it sounds odd and surprising that it would be done often, if at all. In the meantime, if all of this is true, it again makes me wonder about those who seem to think that a strong press is important. What they really mean is that good reporting is important, and that does not appear to be the same thing.

Filed Under: freedom of the press, made up, uk