Dead People Mysteriously Support The FCC's Attack On Net Neutrality

from the something-shady-goin'-on dept

We've noted for months how an unknown party has been using bots to bombard the FCC website with entirely bogus support for the agency's planned attack on net neutrality. Inquiries so far have indicated that whatever group or individual is behind the fake support used a bot that automatically pulled names -- in alphabetical order -- from a compromised database of some kind. Earlier this year one reporter actually managed to track down some of these folks -- who say they never filed such comments or in many instances had no idea what net neutrality even is.

Earlier this year, some reporters discovered that some of the biggest fans of the FCC's myopic assault on net neutrality appear to be dead:

"As the war over the fate of America's free and open internet lumbers on, it appears that opponents of net neutrality will do anything in their power to turn control of the internet over to massive telecom companies—including committing fraud. As detailed in a letter sent to the FCC Thursday morning, people are pissed that their personal information was used without their knowledge to post anti-net neutrality comments to the FCC's website, which includes at least two people who are recently deceased.

Others have since continued to dig through the names used to support Ajit Pai's attack on net neutrality -- and continue to find that many of them had never visited the FCC website, had no idea what net neutrality is, or were no longer breathing. Like John Skalski of Sharpsburg, Georgia -- who back in May purportedly submitted this (factually incorrect) comment to the FCC comment proceeding. Note its content is different from the bot-generated comments that had been methodically submitted already:

Which is interesting because John is, well, dead:

"However, if you go to his house on 11 Tee Pee Row, you will unfortunately speak to a kind person who will tell you that John has been passed away since 2016 and no one else there has the same name. Unfortunately, that is a fake public comment. I found Mr. Skalski’s obituary later:

This is where we'll remind you that the FCC has shown no interest whatsoever in investigating any of this. Similarly, when I contacted the agency to tell them someone else had written a fraudulent comment in my name supporting the attack on net neutrality, I was told there was simply nothing that could be done. Combined with the agency's apparently fabricated DDoS attack, there's more than a few indicators that the agency is eager to malign the integrity of the public feedback period in order to try and downplay the massive public backlash to its handout to the telecom industry.

Since the FCC is expected to unveil its full plan ahead of Thanksgiving for what will likely be a vote right before Christmas, contacting your lawmakers on this subject remains of utmost importance. Should the FCC decide to ignore the public and dismantle the protections anyway, it seems more than likely that this recent necromancy will play a starring role in the inevitable lawsuits to come.

Filed Under: comments, dead people, fcc, net neutrality

Portugal Shows The Internet Why Net Neutrality Is Important

from the sorry,-freedom-is-extra dept

So if you've followed the debate over net neutrality for much of the last decade, you probably remember images like these, purporting to show what the internet might look like if we let broadband duopolies like AT&T or Comcast dictate internet access pricing structure:

And while these mock ups were tongue in cheek, large ISPs have given every indication that this idea of freedom costing extra isn't too far from their ideal. And abusing a lack of broadband competition to force users to shell out additional funds to access to the content and services of their choice isn't too far off of what has already happened, whether we're talking about AT&T's decision to block Facetime from working unless users shelled out for more expensive plans, or Verizon's recent decision to charge users $10 more just to avoid arbitrary video throttling.

While the EU does have some fairly decent net neutrality rules, countries do have some leeway in terms of enforcement -- especially when it comes to "zero rating" (or the act of imposing usage caps, then exempting your own or a partner's content). So ISPs in Portugal have already started taking advantage of it in a way that eerily echoes the warnings net neutrality advocates have been making for years. Lisbon-based mobile and fixed broadband provider MEO has been selling broadband service tiers for some time that cap your internet data usage, after which they're happy to sell you additional buckets of data depending on which types of services you traditionally use:

It's important to note that capping usage then doling out additional data based on types of content isn't the same idea as blocking users from accessing parts of the internet unless they pay up. Several news outlets have conflated MEO's pricing above with the outright blocking of certain services, which simply isn't the case. Most ISPs realize that outright blocking of content is a PR disaster that's more trouble than its worth.

That said, what MEO is doing is still detrimental to the health of the internet. As we saw with T-Mobile's Binge On program -- which exempted certain video and music services from the carrier's caps, these "zero rating" and usage caps plans are designed to create the illusion of a bargain. But these types of plans not only raise questions about ISP power to dictate which companies and services are whitelisted, but they're based on a fundamentally incorrect premise that these usage restrictions are necessary in the first place.

Usage caps and overage fees aren't based on network or economic realities. They aren't useful to manage congestion. Their entire function is to creatively drive up costs via arbitrary and artificial barriers to entry, after which ISPs convince consumers they're somehow getting a deal by providing additional data "for free" or "at a discount." ISPs have often falsely tried to equate this as the same thing as 1-800 numbers or free shipping, which is bullshit. All that's really happening is that internet access is being artificially limited, and users are being forced to pay more money to access the internet as intended.

While people often like to focus on the threat of ISPs blocking access to content, ISPs know that's a surefire way to earn public scorn. That's why ISPs around the world have long since developed a myriad of more creative ways to (ab)use the lack of competition in the space to ill effect, whether that's imposing arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees, exempting an ISPs own services from said caps, or hamstringing competitors elsewhere in the network, as we saw when ISPs began intentionally clogging peering points to drive up costs for streaming competitors and transit operators (interconnection).

With the Trump administration rushing forward with its plan to kill net neutrality here in the States, and a rise in cable's monopoly over fixed-line broadband, you can expect a whole lot more U.S. broadband pricing and package "creativity" in the not so distant future. That may not involve outright blocking your access to content, but it's more than likely to involve entirely arbitrary, uncompetitive and harmful limits you'll be told are somehow necessary and for your own good.

Filed Under: competition, fcc, net neutrality, portugal, tiered internet

Verizon-Funded Group Claims Killing Net Neutrality Would Really Help Puerto Rico Right Now

from the really-bad-taste dept

We've long noted how one of the sleazier telecom industry lobbying tactics involves paying minority, diversity, or other groups to parrot policies that actually undermine their constituents, but provide the illusion of public support for shitty positions. Like when the cable industry paid Jesse Jackson to claim that trying to bring competition to the cable box was akin to racism in the 1960's American South. Or when AT&T paid the The Hispanic Institute to support the company's planned acquisition of T-Mobile, ignoring that the deal would have killed tens of thousands of jobs, while driving up wireless rates for all Americans.

Because there appears to be zero public repercussion for this grotesque tactic, it has continued to be highly effective -- and has been of great use to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast as they attempt to gut net neutrality rules. While this sort of group co-opting is always in bad taste, the Intercept noticed that the Verizon-funded National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce decided to take things to the next level this week. In an editorial over at The Hill, executive director Justin V&‌eacute;lez-Hagan claimed killing net neutrality would aid storm-stricken Puerto Rico:

"My organization’s interests — especially those of small businesses and entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico who now need to be afforded every advantage and opportunity to grow more than ever before — and our members’ mutual experience have made it clear that the best thing for America’s fragile economy will be for the FCC to continue its plan to repeal the unnecessary regulations."

Vélez-Hagan wrote that the public should back the effort by Pai and others to place the Republican majority in Congress in charge of remaking net neutrality rules. Doing so, Vélez-Hagan wrote, would provide the “incentive for businesses to invest in Puerto Rico (and others impacted by natural disasters) instead of relying solely on relief packages.”

So one, as documented countless times, the claim that modest U.S. net neutrality rules (which didn't go half as far as other international implementations in Canada, India or elsewhere) hurt broadband investment is indisuptable nonsense, a position supported by SEC filings, earnings reports, and ISP executives' own statements. That doesn't stop the broadband industry from paying countless economists, fauxcademics, astroturfers, politicians, diversity groups and other paid policy parrots to repeat this claim ad nauseam -- despite all of them knowing full well it simply isn't true.

Two, the idea that gutting popular consumer protections will magically help Puerto Rico rebuild is both nonsensical and offensive. Many Puerto Ricans continue to struggle to get clean drinking water and medical care, and most telecom services won't be restored until sometime next year. The idea that Puerto Ricans have the luxury to worry about net neutrality right now is obnoxious tone deafness, and the claim that killing effective, useful consumer protections is almost as good as traditional relief funding is both ignorant and dangerous.

Of course, since this cozy quid pro quo is never clearly put into writing, groups like this can usually hide behind a quick "no comment" or some faux breathless indignation at the idea these groups are little more than glorified parrots for industry. Meanwhile, outlets like the Hill are more than happy to print this kind of prattle without the slightest funding and conflict of interest disclosures, only perpetuating the problem.

Filed Under: competition, justin velez-hagan, net neutrality, puerto rico
Companies: national puerto rican chamber of commerce, verizon

A Public Focused Approach To Net Neutrality

from the empowering-users,-rather-than-lobbyists dept

Net neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services. It's a principle that's faced many threats over the years from ISPs and government agencies seeking to exercise control over the free and open Internet.

With the roll back of net neutrality protections looming, many people are now asking, "What if there is no net neutrality?"

This "what-if" debate is surprising, however, because we have a clear, documented history of the kinds of non-neutral, discriminatory practices that ISPs have actually deployed in recent years. Here are just a few ways ISPs have throttled or blocked content in the past:

• Packet forgery: In 2007 Comcast was caught interfering with their customers’ use of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer file sharing

• Discriminatory traffic shaping that prioritizes some protocols over others: a Canadian ISP slowed down all encrypted file transfers for five years

• Prohibitions on tethering: the FCC fined Verizon for charging consumers for using their phone as a mobile hotspot

• Overreaching clauses in ISP terms of service, such as prohibitions on sharing your home Wi-Fi network

• Hindering innovation with "fast lane" discrimination that allows wireless customers without data plans to access certain sites but not the whole Internet

• Hijacking and interference with DNS, search engines, HTTP transmission, and other basic Internet functionality to inject ads and raise revenue from affiliate marketing schemes, from companies like Paxfire, FairEagle, and others

Individually and collectively, these practices pose a dire threat to this purely democratic engine of innovation that has allowed hackers, startups, and kids in their college dorm rooms to create the free Internet that we know and love today.

Nonetheless, Ajit Pai, the new FCC Chairman backed by many Congressmen and a very powerful lobby, is moving forward to reverse net neutrality protections. At stake are the net neutrality rules that would allow Comcast and other ISPs to once again engage in non-neutral market practices like forging packets and blocking some Internet traffic.

Chairman Pai's actions ignore the overwhelming sentiment of over 22 million Internet users who have contacted the FCC in an unprecedented outreach to government to express their views on net neutrality. According to a poll this summer the public support to protect net neutrality is overwhelming. 77 percent of those surveyed support net neutrality protections, as codified in the FCC's 2015 Open Internet order. And support for the FCC's policy is bipartisan, with 73 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of Democrats, and 76 percent of Independents in favor of the rules.

It is tempting to reach for easy solutions, but handing the problem over to a government agency with strong industry ties and poor mechanisms for public accountability poses a real danger of creating more problems than we’d solve.

One alternative is to foster a genuinely competitive market for Internet access. If subscribers and customers had adequate information about their options and could vote with their feet, ISPs would have strong incentives to treat all network traffic fairly. But the ISP market today is under oligopoly control. Nearly one in three American households have no choice when it comes to their Internet, and for all the other consumers choices are quite limited.

Another scenario would be for Congress to step in and pass net neutrality legislation that outlines what the ISPs are not allowed to do. But fighting giant ISP mega-corporations (and their army of lobbyists) in Congress promises to be a tough battle.

Yet another option: empower subscribers to not just test their ISP, but challenge it in court if they detect harmful non-neutral practices. That gives all of us the chance to be watchdogs of the public interest, but it too, is likely to face powerful ISP opposition.

Net neutrality is a hard problem, and will remain challenging. But one guiding principle to keep in mind is that any effort to defend net neutrality should use the lightest touch possible, encourage a competitive marketplace, and focus on preventing discriminatory conduct by ISPs.

Internet freedom means that all Internet traffic should be treated fairly and without gatekeepers to determine winners and losers. Special deals with a few companies will inevitably inhibit competition, thwart innovation and suppress free speech and expression through throttling, packet forgery and paid prioritizations. There is simply no evidence that Internet users can trust the ISP oligopoly, the FCC, or any government agency with open-ended regulatory authority of the Internet. In fact the evidence is clear to the contrary.

Free and open access to the Internet is a universal right. Let's seek solutions to protect net neutrality that empower users with free (as in freedom) Internet access. The power of the Internet belongs with the people.

John Ottman is Chairman and co-founder of Minds, Inc. a social media network. He is also an enterprise software industry executive, and the author of Save the Database, Save the World, a book on database security.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, congress, fcc, lobbying, net neutrality

FCC Likely To Use Thanksgiving Holiday To Hide Its Unpopular Plan To Kill Net Neutrality

from the cranberry-sauce-and-regulatory-capture dept

Consumer groups believe that the FCC is planning to formally unveil its unpopular plan to gut net neutrality the day before Thanksgiving, apparently in the hopes of burying media backlash in the hustle and bustle of holiday preparation. At that time, the FCC is expected to not only unveil the core text of their Orwell-inspired "Restore Internet Freedom" proposal, but schedule a formal date for the inevitable, final vote to kill the rules.

While announcing bad news right before a holiday works in some instances, net neutrality has been such a hot-button topic for so long, the ploy isn't likely to soften criticism of Trump or the FCC in the slightest. These fairly modest consumer protections have broad, bipartisan support, since our collective disdain for uncompetitive giants like Comcast tends to bridge even the starkest partisan divide. Eliminating these rules is, by any measure, little more than a brazen gift to one of the least competitive and least popular industries in America, and anybody telling you otherwise is either financially conflicted or misinformed.

Consumer groups like Fight for the Future seem to believe they can garner enough support in Congress to try and thwart the FCC's looming vote:

Once the FCC announces a vote, it will become much, much harder to stop them from gutting the rules that prevent companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from charging us all extra fees to access sites like reddit, and controlling what we see and do online by throttling, blocking, and censoring websites, apps, games, and streaming services.

The good news is that we are hearing from people who are meeting with Congress that there are key lawmakers who are sympathetic to the cause, and considering stepping in to slow down the FCC. But they need to be getting a lot more phone calls from constituents in order to act.

While calling your lawmaker remains a good idea (for reasons we'll get to later), hoping that Congress will thwart the FCC's looming vote remains a long shot. A better chance at scuttling Ajit Pai's plan comes after that rule-killing vote is cast. Given the numerous procedural gaffes and dubious behavior by this FCC (making up bogus DDoS attacks, ignoring fraud and abuse of the FCC website in order to generate bogus support for the move), inevitable lawsuits may be able to convince a court that the FCC blatantly ignored the public interest and violated procedural norms while trying to give telecom duopolies a giant, sloppy kiss.

But fans of a healthy internet need to understand the telecom industry's plan to kill net neutrality remains a two-act play. The first act involves FCC boss Ajit Pai playing bad cop by blatantly ignoring the public and ramming through a 3-2 partisan party line vote. The second act will involve pushing ISP-loyal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to support a new net neutrality law covertly written by AT&T, Verizon and Comcast lobbyists. Said law will be marketed as a "solution" to the fifteen year debate, but will be so filled with loopholes as to be effectively useless. It would, however, prevent the FCC from revisiting the issue down the road.

Expect the FCC's rule-killing vote to come sometime in December, with the lobbying push for a new, ISP-crafted net-neutrality legislative "solution" gaining steam immediately in the new year. You know, for freedom.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, competition, fcc, net neutrality, thanksgiving

GAO Will Investigate The FCC's Dubious DDoS Attack Claims

from the somethin'-fishy-goin'-on 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 particularly surprising; the FCC's website has long been seen as an outdated relic from the wayback times of Netscape hit counters and awful MIDI music.

But then something weird happened. In the midst of all the media attention Oliver was receiving for his segment, the FCC issued a statement (pdf) by former FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray, claiming that comprehensive FCC "analysis" indicated that it was a malicious DDoS attack, not angry net neutrality supporters, that brought the agency's website to its knees:

"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 security researchers who studied that claim found none of the usual indicators that would normally precede such an attack. And subsequent news outlet FOIA requests wound up showing that not only does there appear to have never been any such attack, there was no "analysis" conducted or documented. When media outlets began noticing that something fishy was going on, the FCC issued a punchy statement accusing the media of being "completely irresponsible," while claiming it had plenty of data proving its attack claims (its FOIA responses to journalists state the complete opposite) -- it just didn't want to show its hand.

Most FCC watchers think there's two options here. One, the FCC was incompetent and misread John Oliver viewers as a DDoS attack, then tried to cover up said incompetence. Or the FCC knew it wasn't a DDoS attack, but constructed the narrative to try and downplay media coverage of the plan's unpopularity, then tried to cover that up. The former is certainly in character, but the latter would go hand in hand with the agency's apathy toward whoever has been spamming the FCC's website with fraudulent "support" for what is fairly uniformly seen as shitty policy and a mindless hand out to big telecom.

Heeding calls for something vaguely resembling an answer, the General Accounting Office (GAO) has agreed to launch an investigation into what actually happened at the FCC:

"A spokesman for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed it has accepted a request from two Democratic lawmakers to probe the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that the FCC said disrupted its electronic comment filing system in May. The spokesman said that the probe, which was first reported by Politico, is “now in the queue, but the work won’t get underway for several months."

While this story will likely get buried by more pressing news, this inquiry could be notably important in regards to the FCC's attempts to scuttle net neutrality. If the GAO inquiry finds that the FCC was inept or engaged in a cover up, that could raise all manner of procedural questions over whether the FCC was serving the public interest and following established agency protocol. Combined with the agency's obvious apathy to the fact that some group is engaged in fraud to generate bogus support for killing net neutrality, whatever the GAO finds could provide some very interesting fodder for the lawsuits to come.

Filed Under: ajit pai, david bray, ddos, fcc, gao, net neutrality

Hoping The Third Time's The Charm, ISPs Urge Supreme Court To Kill Net Neutrality

from the one-more-time-around dept

We've noted how large ISPs like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon are covering all their bases in their endless quest to kill popular (some would say necessary) net neutrality protections. They've successfully lobbied FCC boss Ajit Pai to vote to kill the existing rules later this year, despite the massive public opposition to that plan. But they're also lobbying Congress to draft a new net neutrality law they publicly insist will solve everything, while privately hoping you're too stupid to realize will be entirely written by their lawyers and lobbyists -- ensuring it has so many loopholes as to be effectively useless.

In case those first two options don't work, large ISPs are also -- for the third time in as many years -- looking for the Supreme Court's help. ISPs lost their first attempt to overturn the Title II net neutrality order last year when the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia shot down their complaints (which included insisting that net neutrality rules violated their First Amendment rights). ISPs lost again earlier this year when the courts shot down their en banc appeal.

Hoping the third time's the charm, lobbyists for Comcast, AT&T and other ISPs have lobbied the Supreme Court to overturn the rules, hoping to kill net neutrality protections both today and for the foreseeable future. Like previous complaints, AT&T's petition to the court (pdf) trots out a parade of theoretical horribles, doubling down on numerous, previously debunked industry claims (like these modest net neutrality rules somehow utterly devastated sector investment, a claim repeatedly debunked by countless journalists and objective economists).

AT&T's petition is a greatest hits of its previous, false claims, including the claim that zero rating (imposing usage caps then letting a company's own content bypass those caps while still penalizing competitors) is somehow "pro consumer":

"It is clear, however, that such open-ended Title II regulation confers expansive authority on the FCC to regulate virtually anything a broadband ISP does and enables any individual or company to file a complaint alleging that any broadband innovation is in some sense “unfair” or “unreasonable.” Pet. App. 696a-700a (¶ 455). The FCC has said, for example, that it could forbid a broadband provider to “zero-rat[e]” certain content (i.e., exempt it from monthly data allowances) on the theory that doing so is “unfair” to other content providers, id. at 343a-49a (¶¶ 151-153), even though zero-rating is equivalent to bundled discounts and is thus strongly pro-consumer."

As we've noted here quite frequently, that's all bullshit. AT&T, like other ISPs, has abused the lack of competition in the broadband space by imposing arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps. From there, ISPs like Comcast and AT&T have exempted their own services from these caps while penalizing competitors. Even then, the FCC didn't explicitly ban this practice (as is the case in Chile, the Netherlands, India, Canada and elsewhere), instead stating they'd only act on a "case by case basis." The FCC was just preparing to declare some of this behavior anti-competitive when Ajit Pai and Donald Trump arrived on the scene.

The nation's mega ISPs all petitioned the Court to declare that the FCC exceeded its statutory authority by reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service. If the Supreme Court obliges, that would prevent any future FCC Commissioners from revisiting the issue, leaving the whole net neutrality issue up to a cash-compromised and utterly dysfunctional Congress to solve (good luck with that). Of course the Supreme Court may decide Pai's planned assault on the rules makes hearing the case duplicative, dashing ISP dreams of ISP lawyers hoping to kill even the faintest specter of meaningful net neutrality rules, permanently.

Since AT&T lawyers are also busy in court trying to undermine the FTC's oversight of broadband providers as well (or in fact any company with even a modest "common carrier" component), the goal here is pretty straight forward: gutting all meaningful government oversight of one of the least competitive industries in America. Should this multi-pronged, bullshit-laden effort prove successful, the laundry list of problems we've had with companies like Comcast are going to seem arguably quaint in a few years.

Filed Under: fcc, net neutrality, supreme court
Companies: at&t