FCC stonewalled investigation of net neutrality comment fraud, NY AG says
Net neutrality fraudsters likely impersonated "hundreds of thousands" of people.
New York's attorney general has been trying to investigate fraud in public comments on the Federal Communications Commission's anti-net neutrality plan but alleges that the FCC has refused to cooperate with the investigation.
NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says that "hundreds of thousands of Americans" were likely impersonated in fake comments on the net neutrality docket. But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's office would not provide information needed for New York's investigation, Schneiderman wrote yesterday in an open letter to Pai:
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[T]he 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.
The FCC received 22 million comments on its plan to repeal net neutrality rules and deregulate broadband providers, but many were fraudulent. In May, some of the people who were impersonated by anti-net neutrality spammers asked the Federal Communications Commission to notify other victims of the impersonation and remove fraudulent comments from the net neutrality docket.
But the FCC has seemingly taken no action to remove fraudulent comments or to prevent them from being filed.
On Twitter, Schneiderman described "a massive scheme that fraudulently used real Americans' identities" in order to "drown out the views of real people and businesses."
https://twitter.com/AGSchneiderman/s...51001648631808
"[W]hile some of these fake comments used made-up names and addresses, many misused the real names and addresses of actual people as part of the effort to undermine the integrity of the comment process," Schneiderman wrote. "That's akin to identity theft, and it happened on a massive scale."
Schneiderman's office found that tens of thousands of New Yorkers may have had their identities misused in this way. "Indeed, analysis showed that, in all, hundreds of thousands of Americans likely were victimized in the same way, including tens of thousands per state in California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and possibly others," he wrote. "Impersonation and other misuse of a person’s identity violates New York law, so my office launched an investigation."
But numerous requests for information went unanswered by the FCC, Schneiderman alleged. He wrote:
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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.
We contacted Pai's office about Schneiderman's allegations today and will update this story if we get a response. Despite allegedly refusing to help New York's investigation, Pai has claimed that he is making the FCC's "operations more transparent" than his predecessors did.
Yesterday, Pai announced his plan to eliminate net neutrality rules and to preempt state laws that regulate broadband. The FCC is scheduled to vote on the plan on December 14.
Multiple investigations
Schneiderman is not the first to accuse the FCC of stonewalling investigations into the net neutrality comment system. The FCC's claim that the comment system was temporarily disrupted by DDoS attacks has received lots of attention, but the FCC hasn't provided all the records requested in several Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests.
The FCC also told members of Congress that it won't reveal exactly how it plans to prevent future attacks on the public comment system.
A FoIA request from Ars was denied by the FCC due to "an ongoing investigation."
US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) criticized the FCC for failing to turn over its internal analysis of the DDoS attacks that hit the FCC's public comment system. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) requested an independent investigation into the DDoS attacks, and the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has agreed to investigate.
The FCC is also facing a lawsuit alleging that it ignored a FoIA request for data related to bulk comment uploads, which may contain comments falsely attributed to people without their knowledge.
“The right to control one’s own identity”
Pai has said that the number of comments for or against net neutrality rules "is not as important as the substantive comments that are in the record."
Pai also told lawmakers that he would only change his mind about eliminating net neutrality rules in response to comments if they show that "infrastructure investment... has increased dramatically" since the net neutrality rules went into effect or that the overall economy would suffer from a net neutrality rollback, or that startups and consumers can't thrive without the existing rules.
Schneiderman implored Pai to reconsider the FCC's "refusal to assist in my office's law enforcement investigation to identify and hold accountable those who illegally misused so many New Yorkers' identities to corrupt the public comment process."
New York's investigation is "about the right to control one's own identity and prevent the corruption of a process designed to solicit the opinion of real people and institutions," Schneiderman wrote. Misuse of identity should concern those who are in favor of net neutrality as well as those who want the rules to be repealed, he wrote.
Schneiderman's letter to Pai ends with this:
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In an era where foreign governments have indisputably tried to use the Internet and social media to influence our elections, federal and state governments should be working together to ensure that malevolent actors cannot subvert our administrative agencies’ decision-making processes.
