FCC Refuses Records For Investigation Into Fake Net Neutrality Comments (variety.com) 164
"FCC general counsel Tom Johnson has told the New York State attorney general that the FCC is not providing information for his investigation into fake net-neutrality comments, saying those comments did not affect the review, and challenging the state's ability to investigate the feds." Variety has more:
The FCC's general counsel, in a letter to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, also dismissed his concerns that the volume of fake comments or those made with stolen identities have "corrupted" the rule-making process... He added that Schneiderman's request for logs of IP addresses would be "unduly burdensome" to the commission, and would "raise significant personal privacy concerns."
Amy Spitalnick, Schneiderman's press secretary, said in a statement that the FCC "made clear that it will continue to obstruct a law enforcement investigation. It's easy for the FCC to claim that there's no problem with the process, when they're hiding the very information that would allow us to determine if there was a problem. To be clear, impersonation is a violation of New York law," she said... "The only privacy jeopardized by the FCC's continued obstruction of this investigation is that of the perpetrators who impersonated real Americans."
One of the FCC's Democratic commissioners claimed that this response "shows the FCC's sheer contempt for public input and unreasonable failure to support integrity in its process... Moreover, the FCC refuses to look into how nearly half a million comments came from Russian sources."
Amy Spitalnick, Schneiderman's press secretary, said in a statement that the FCC "made clear that it will continue to obstruct a law enforcement investigation. It's easy for the FCC to claim that there's no problem with the process, when they're hiding the very information that would allow us to determine if there was a problem. To be clear, impersonation is a violation of New York law," she said... "The only privacy jeopardized by the FCC's continued obstruction of this investigation is that of the perpetrators who impersonated real Americans."
One of the FCC's Democratic commissioners claimed that this response "shows the FCC's sheer contempt for public input and unreasonable failure to support integrity in its process... Moreover, the FCC refuses to look into how nearly half a million comments came from Russian sources."
Fraud detected. (Score:3, Insightful)
They're covering up their fraud by saying "It wasn't important" - but that's not going to fly.
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Well really they're just telling the truth. They decided to kill NN and fuck what the public thought. It won't matter if 100% of the anti-NN comments are fraudulent, because their minds are made up already. It's like Pai's "it's funny because it's true" I'm-a-shill joke.
Yup. The fake comments won't affect the proposal. The real comments won't affect the proposal. The comments were a formality, not something they cared about.
Agencies are required to publish rule changes, and they're required to accept public comments for a time. But ultimately: "This process is not like a ballot initiative or an up-or-down vote in a legislature. An agency is not permitted to base its final rule on the number of comments in support of the rule over those in opposition to it. At the end [federalregister.gov]
Re: Fraud detected. (Score:3, Informative)
"Who gives a shit?"
Apparently the NY Attorney General's office. If they consider it important enough to launch an investigation. Now, there might be nothing but, it sounds like there's already been enough evidence to show massive identity theft. Even though it is ID theft of FCC comments is relatively trivial, it is still ID theft and carries stiff penalties. These are the crimes that the attorney general wants to investigate and the current FCC chairman wants to bury.
Re: Fraud detected. (Score:5, Informative)
It is all a publicity stunt. The NYS AG knows he has no standing. But "fighting for the people" looks good on a campaign sticker.
No standing? That's debatable. From TFS:
my Spitalnick, Schneiderman's press secretary, said in a statement that the FCC "made clear that it will continue to obstruct a law enforcement investigation. It's easy for the FCC to claim that there's no problem with the process, when they're hiding the very information that would allow us to determine if there was a problem. To be clear, impersonation is a violation of New York law," she said... "The only privacy jeopardized by the FCC's continued obstruction of this investigation is that of the perpetrators who impersonated real Americans."
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That's Amy Spitalnick. Sorry for missing "A" in the copy-paste.
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I've heard of many instances where people's names and cities match. These aren't just randomly generated, but some database of people that someone obtained and used to submit anti-Net Neutrality comments in those people's names.
Re: Fraud detected. (Score:3, Informative)
To be clear, the AG isn't challenging the FCC on net neutrality. On that, you are right -- NY cannot override the FCC. This, however, is about a crime committed against NY citizens on the FCC's website. If someone had threatened to kill someone via that medium, the AG would absolutely have the right to request records to investigate. Just because this is a less severe crime does not dilute the AG's standing to investigate it.
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It isn't important. The comments are only that: comments. They aren't votes, they don't have any legal standing. Who gives a shit? There's probably millions of bot-posted comments both for and against NN that were submitted to the site. Everyone knows this and it's why none of the comments should be given any gravity in the matter.
And "russian sources"? Please.. Like it's some cloak and dagger shit to point your post-script at a fucking VPN. Christ, this crap is amateur hour.
Exactly, nobody cares other than a few slashdot types. Get over it. Its just a bunch of comments, 95% either copied and/or written by someone largely ignorant in relevant matters.
Re:Fraud detected. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And furthermore, the FCC seems to be pointing out one side's fake comments to paint a picture that the common man is actually in favor of what they are doing. Even if the FCC has the authority to do whatever they want anyway, they can still try to avoid further backlash by claiming a lack of controversy.
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The point is, if this had gone perfectly (for the FCC), it would have looked like they had allowed comment and that the public had come down on the side of doing away with NN. Us malcontents would get angry and blame each other, not the FCC. Even now, with this confusion, they get to act like they have every reason to believe that the public comment went their way. By now, of course, it gives them the look of a child with their eyes closed and ears stopped up shouting "Nuh-uh!" but they still have that vene
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What is then the point of providing a means of public comment when the comments mean nothing?
It's all about perception. You know, like the TSA with security.
Barking up the wrong tree (Score:1)
It doesn't matter if any comments were faked or not. The FCC is not using any of the comments in their decision. The only comments that matter to them are those from Verizon et al.
Re:Barking up the wrong tree (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter here. What matters is that the NY AG is investigating a criminal impersonation and the FCC is obstructing justice.
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It doesn't matter here. What matters is that the NY AG is investigating a criminal impersonation and the FCC is obstructing justice.
I agree. Sure the FCC doesn't have to care about the comments. That is the result of losing an election.
Still, if there is an investigation into fraud then they should cooperate. Even if the low life political appointment at the FCC honestly don't give a damn about the comments, if people's identities have been stolen, then you have to assume that the thieves are going to continue to use those identities for bad purposes.
Basically Trump's government is now aiding and abetting crime by obstructing justice
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Par for the course with the current #predophile administration and it's general contempt for law. The authoritarians have already won. It's just going to take a few more months before everyone else figures this out.
Oh, and the revolution won't be televised or on the internet. Comcast, Verizon, etc. will make damn sure of that.
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The only comments that matter to them are those from Verizon et al.
Those were instructions not comments.
Re:Barking up the wrong tree (Score:4, Insightful)
More accurately, the only comments that matter to Pai are the ones from his future employer.
reality isn't cooperating (Score:5, Insightful)
So they are making their own. Freedom for the few and higher cost for the masses.
Re:The FCC needs to know (Score:5, Funny)
And how many dozens do you think come from Canada?
And more importantly, how will you be able to detect those, eh?
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I think you vastly overestimate the popularity of this site.
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Consequences or Endless Loop (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Consequences or Endless Loop (Score:5, Interesting)
>Either we break up the companies doing this
You need a new anti-monopoly law that doesn't depend on investigating complaints. I like the idea of raising their taxation based on their market share.
And then you have to nationalize common infrastructure, because it's really a bad idea to have every private company laying their own fiber or cable just like it'd be a bad idea if all roads were toll roads and different companies were not allowed to connect to each other.
Something tells me both those ideas run very much contrary to deeply-held American economic ideals and will never happen.
Re:Consequences or Endless Loop (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the idea of raising their taxation based on their market share.
Me too. This is the type of tax reform I could get behind. It would discourage large corporate mergers because, if the merger were to jump them up to a way higher tax bracket, it wouldn't make sense to merge.
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I guess that's true, but I'm not sure vertical integration is a bad thing if there's a diverse marketplace. Furthermore, in such a marketplace the market itself may discourage vertical integration as most firms have to be a pretty big player to make vertical integration cost effective.
It's a valid concern, though. I guess that's the challenge of economics. The only way to test a hypothesis is to do it and then you discover what the unintended consequences are. Politically, this type of experimentation is di
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I like the idea of raising their taxation based on their market share.
Wouldn’t that just favor their current approach of carving out regional monopolies that don’t compete with one another? None has more than X%, yet all have complete dominion over their little fiefdom.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of creative yet simple approaches to taxation, but I’m not convinced this one would work in practice.
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I've posted this idea before, this was an overly simplified version.
You'd likely end up with a fair amount of lawyer-ese to cover such situations, as well as problems like new products or businesses that are (naturally) a monopoly for a period of time.
Re:Fuck Communists (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have any idea how much of that infrastructure is on public land or on land taken by eminent domain? For that matter, do you know how much of it is paid for by tax dollars? The telecoms are very, very happy to take everything they can get "for the public good", but somehow people like you come out of the woodwork screeching about grubby communists!
Get a grip. Infrastructure can be "nationalized" by simply getting rid of the various laws directly granting monopolies to various telecom companies and building separate competing infrastructure with open access policies. Heck, in some cases, do you think maybe, just maybe, it might be fair play to use eminent domain to take back some of the stuff that was taken from private citizens via eminent domain and given to the telecoms in the first place?
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That is the main objection to removing the classification of the internet as a public utility and moving the administration of internet issues to the Trade Commission; who investigates a monopoly doing reprehensible things.
The FTC only investigates if there is a legal challenge to what a company is doing and it takes lawyers and years. As a public utility, the companies have to get permission to change how they do business and public comment is done prior to decisions being made.
Obviously, the current FCC
Re:Fuck Communists (Score:4, Insightful)
Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea — you have your "worker's paradises" to move to.
And Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Canada. . .
Almost all infrastructure runs through the government anyway, no matter what country you live in. For someone who comes from a "Communism-destroyed" country, you have a poor grasp on what communism really is. You also shouldn't apply some bullshit golden age fallacy to America's past. This country was one of the last to abolish slavery. We had government sanctioned racial segregation until the 1960s. There are neighborhoods known as "food deserts" because you literally can't buy healthy food. I'm glad America's worked out for you, but it doesn't work out for everyone.
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Not sure, why you listed these
I listed them because they're countries that implement heavy socialist policies and yet for the average citizen they're much better places to live.
are barely at the America's wealth
Wealth is relative. If you're talking about GDP then it would be a better comparison to look at the EU vs. the U.S. than individual countries in the EU. I think if you look at the poorest of the poor in those countries vs. the poorest of the poor in the U.S., you'll see a stark difference.
despite not maintaining a military worth a damn
How exactly is this relevant?
Collective ownership of the means of production — that's what it means. And every time you nationalize something — as the asshole above proposed — you get closer and closer towards that.
There's nothing inherently wrong with such an
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Yeah. Nothing inherently wrong with Communism — except, wherever implemented in earnest, it leaves millions of dead and the survivors with neither material wealth nor human rights.
You think Norway is communist?
lol. You're a stupid cunt mate. Safe to ignore.
Re:Fuck Communists (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, we are still richer than most of those Socialist paradises you listed.
For all your disdain for the collective and praise for the individual, I find it odd that you measure wealth based on GDP rather than the spending power and economic freedom of the poorest of the poor. Socialized medicine frees. Capitalist medicine makes one a slave to their own health. Market regulations free consumers from predatory lenders and inhumane working conditions.
I save citations for research papers and extreme claims. Nothing I claimed warranted such a waste of time. However, you may want to read more carefully before you waste your own time refuting something I didn't say (there's a huge difference between "one of the last to abolish slavery" and "the last").
The fact that you believe the U.S. is an example of a laissez-faire country demonstrates your ignorance. Have you ever heard of the U.S. Postal Service? Do you know what a grant is and how they have propped up higher education and are the main reason U.S. innovation was unsurpassed in the twentieth century? Social Security? Medicare? The who article is about the FCC, A REGULATORY AGENCY.
Laissez-faire is a myth. It's never existed and never will. Just like communism. All countries are socialist, they just have unique ways of structuring it. Your equivocation of all collectivism and the U.S.S.R. is a silly fallacy. That's why no serious intellectuals take Ayn Rand seriously.
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And my warning stands — I will not stand passively aside, if you, Commie assholes, start moving this country in the wrong direction again. Long before the nightmare of Stalin and Kim, comes the devastation of Chavez — I will not let you do that.
What are you going to do? Invent a time machine and go back and assassinate FDR?
I think we've hit a brick wall. I could keep going but you just don't seem to get nuance, as evidenced by your claims of "proof" and your demands for "proof." That's not how empiricism works. You can show me evidence, I can show you evidence, but those who believe in proof are fools.
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Then stop the glut of local and state governments creating a monopoly on service providers by allowing one provider to string cable on poles and no others. Prevent the same governments from preventing municipality-owned service providers as well.
You want to get the government out of infrastructure? Get them out then.
'Til then, you're nothing but a fascist fool destroying what's left of America.
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I'd very very much like to stop that "glut". Yes. For years I've been reposting this link
You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means. [usatoday.com]
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Please explain how a local government catering to a single provider by preventing all others from hanging/sharing cables and thus providing service, in exchange for kickbacks from that single provider is anything but fascism.
To quote your linked article:
"Fascism's distinguishing characteristic is a "mixed economy." Unlike socialists and communists who seek to abolish private business, fascists are content to let business remain in private hands. Instead, fascists use regulations, mandates, and taxes to cont
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By that definition, Obamacare as it was passed is fascist. Not denying it, just point it out. Socialized medicine seems less evil by a mile.
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Yes, and the cited opinion [usatoday.com] states exactly that.
Only because you've never tried it. As bad as Fascism is, Socialism/Communism is much worse — which is why I can't sympathize with the "Antifa" assholes, who "fight Fascism" with hammer-and-sickle [redspark.nu].
Consider the example of Spain — ruled by Fascism for decades [wikipedia.org]. For all their Collectivism-induced troubles, they were always better off than the USSR and
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It certainly is Fascism — or, maybe, just "unofficial" corruption.
Nationalizing infrastructure does not work. Period.
But, no less important, such confiscation is also tyrannical. Even if it did work, you can not do that —
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He's not lying (Score:5, Insightful)
The FCC guy is right, though. Millions of fake comments had no bearing on the outcome at all, which was preordained.
Re: He's not lying (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it had no effect on the outcome, evidence shows massive, organized identity theft, which is a crime regardless of how much impact it had on the process.
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In that case it eliminates the comments as a prerequisite to satisfying the rules of the FCC changing their policy
No, it just eliminates the need to waste a bunch of time and tax dollars reporting on untold thousands of identical copy/paste spam comments.
scandal (Score:3)
Unscandal (Score:3)
It is a scandal that such a group can make such important decisions and that the congress is not taking action.
Except that congress stated explicitly that the internet not be regulated, and ditching NN brings the FCC in line with what congress wanted.
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> Except that congress stated explicitly that the internet not be regulated, and ditching NN brings the FCC in line with what congress wanted.
When did they? and if so why don't they repeal the telecom act empowering the FCC to enact title II common carrier status? and why is the DMCA still in place if they want the internet to not be regulated? and why is the FCC claiming congress wants the internet regulated by the FTC?
Re:Unscandal (Score:5, Insightful)
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2) Once it is gone, internet service prices will immediately go up, and performance will immediately drop.
Don't assume that. All the ISPs have to do is wait, and not very long, and people will fail to associate the loss of net neutrality with an increase in prices or a drop in service. It's smaller internet startups who are going to feel the brunt of this for the immediate future, and that's invisible to the public.
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The censorship and blocking of content. You're forgetting about that. Once NN is gone Comcast, Verizon, etc. are free to block whatever content they want to block. They don't like a politician, they don't allow that content. They don't like a review site saying they suck. They're gone too. You have a service that competes with the ISP? Whoops, where'd you go?
Ajit Pai is instrumental in paving the way for Trump and his merry band of neo-fascist to bring in the Fourth Reich. Trump already has a propaganda son
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If Google were doing it, fine. That's something which needs to be dealt with too. Google and Facebook and Amazon and Microsoft and others certainly are doing some bad things (though not this), and I am completely on board with dealing with them
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It is a scandal that such a group can make such important decisions and that the congress is not taking action.
No, the scandal is that the FCC under Obama put an executive policy into place that was directly at odds with the specific wishes of congress. Undoing that Obama admin fiat is putting things back into line with the law. I suppose you were also complaining when NN was put into place, for the same reasons? No? Gotcha.
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No, the scandal is that the FCC under Obama put an executive policy into place that was directly at odds with the specific wishes of congress.
What? Why did they pass the telecommunications act of 1996 that explicitly empowers the FCC to enact network neutrality then?
Undoing that Obama admin fiat is putting things back into line with the law. I suppose you were also complaining when NN was put into place, for the same reasons? No? Gotcha.
But the law explicitly empowers the fcc to enact network neutrality, undoing the ruling doesn't put things back in line with the law, in fact the courts are saying that title ii regulation is the only way forward while the FCC is claiming its the FTCs job. This is an attempt by the FCC to get out of following the law as congress specifically enacted it.
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"No, the scandal is that the FCC under Obama put an executive policy into place that was directly at odds with the specific wishes of congress"
The wishes of the republican controlled congress at the time was "Veto anything that black man puts in front of our desk."
It's pretty much the same with Trump who's primary aim is "undo anything that black man managed to get done."
Lol (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually there is a need to do more than that.
You can see how this process is explicitly defined here: https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaking_process.pdf
Re:Lol (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of the spam is from adversarial interests against the general American population, such as ISPs, Russia, etc.
That may have different implications than you think. Per page 13 of this analysis of the comments [broadbandforamerica.com], there were 444,938 comments submitted from Russia, and 444,925 of them were pro-NN.
The entire comment database is freely available for download [broadcastingcable.com] if you'd like to check for yourself.
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That's Russia's standard method of operation though. They seek to inflame debates, not weigh in on them. So they will support both sides of an argument, or the weaker/anti-government side of the argument, just to make people lose faith with each other and with their government. This [abc.net.au] is a pretty good description of it. Russia doesn't actually care who "wins" the argument, only that the argument is as divisive and fractious as possible.
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Broadband for America members include AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, CTIA – The Wireless Association, Comcast, Cox, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), and USTelecom Association.
Of course, that doesn't mean the analysis is automatically bunk, but it certainly does raise alarms. That 444,938 number you quote is based on the analysis that assumes that people were honest on the 'international address' field. Any meaningful analysis would have to go quite a bit deeper than trusting the address that someone put in. The company doing the analysis acknowledges this, noting:
lack of user authentication by ECFS makes it difficult to determine genuine comment submissions . Emprata was also not able to authenticate the filer, address, email, or comment data used for this analysis, nor the methods used to collect those data elements . As a result, it is very difficult to draw any definitive conclusions from the comments found in the docket . Any conclusions that one might draw from the data would be based on the subset of data that they considered to be real.
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consider the source: . . . Of course, that doesn't mean the analysis is automatically bunk, but it certainly does raise alarms.
Which is one of the reasons I pointed out that the data source is freely downloadable (and has been digested and reposted online by at least one source I've seen in passing). Point being, there are enough eyes on the data behind this highly-charged subject that if any of the multiple reports on this data were fudging anything, I'm confident someone would have quite cheerfully pointed that out a long time ago.
Any meaningful analysis would have to go quite a bit deeper than trusting the address that someone put in.
But once you go there, isn't the only realistic option to just throw out the entire database since
Not a vote (Score:2)
In case some of you missed it, the public input wasn't a vote. It doesn't matter who or how many said they wanted it or they should get rid of it. The public comment period was seeking novel legal arguments.
Re:Not a real comments period (Score:2)
One asks for public comments to know what the various parts of the pubic wants, to weigh in your deliberations. If you want to pretend to listen but actually ignore the comments, you have a comments period but set rules that exclude the answers you don't wish to hear.
You can ask for only blue-haired commentators, but that would be a bit obvious. Instead, you might ask for "novel" comments, meaning only those no-one had ever made before[1].
That should get it down to just things like "Dr Who personally s
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The public comment period was seeking novel legal arguments.
Yeah, so they could formulate arguments against them to defend their predetermined position, not so they could actually consider them.
Sue them (Score:2)
all the way to the US Supreme Court and then see, what this whole system is worth...
The FCC is acting in accord with the law here (Score:3)
The FCC is pointing out the rules under which it's legally obligated to operate.
This notice and comment procedure is specified in law, and the FCC cannot legally deviate from it. Under the law, neither numbers of comments nor identities of commenters really matter. A regulatory body is required to address concerns raised in comments as they make their rules, but it doesn't matter who is bringing those concerns so long as they're addressed.
The FCC is merely pointing out that there is a legal process here, and the NY State suit isn't exactly in line with the federal law.
YES, there have been so many articles going around the internet that suggest this is some sort of voting process, that sending in form comments matter, but legally they do not. The FCC gets its orders from Congress, not from people submitting comments on the internet. Those articles were pretty damaging, misleading people about how this part of the US government is designed to operate, and leading them to misunderstand when things don't actually go the way they're told they should go.
So we're at a place where we need to correct that misinformation. People who are interested in the functioning of a body like the FCC now need to know just how the notice and comment process works.
By law numbers and identities don't matter for notice and comment, exactly as the FCC is pointing out. NY State should probably stop joining in on that rhetorical bandwagon suggesting otherwise.
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Can you provide a quote to support your assertion that NY state has suggested what you claim they have?
It appears to me that they've likewise pointed out the rules under which the state as well as federal agencies are legally obligated to operate.
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"It's easy for the FCC to claim that there's no problem with the process, when they're hiding the very information that would allow us to determine if there was a problem."
The reason there's no problem with the process here is that the information at hand has nothing at all to do with the process.
NY State is suggesting otherwise, contrary to the Administrative Procedure Act.
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I'd say their language suggests otherwise, even here where they suggest stolen identities would have interfered with the FCC rulemaking process. By law it would not.
So maybe I'm misinterpreting NY's comments. Fine, but let's just be clear that investigation of stolen identities is one thing, but it doesn't affect the rulemaking itself.
Open Lies (Score:2)
The GOP hasn't won an honest election popular vote in 15 years - This open brazenness is just the beginning. The next step is law change. Notice that Trump has filled more Judge seats at this point in his tenure than Obama, Bush or Clinton... The GOP means to change the US in their favor, regardless of the "will of the people". We witnessing the
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the GOP-controlled senate said nope wait for Trump to take control.
So yes, it really is about the GOP.
Except for when it's about Democrats. Because in previous circumstances, the Democrats running the senate proposed blocking any Bush court appointees "so close to the end of his term" as well ... except unlike the Scalia vacancy, the Dems said they considered a year and a half to be the threshold. Get over your hypocritical self.
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Obama nominated the Senate refused consent. What seems to be the problem here? How are you redefining consent to get what you want? Sounds rapey
Most corrupt administration. (Score:2)
Ever.
"those comments did not affect the review" (Score:2)
None of the comments effected the review, whether for or against. The FCC was going to roll back Net Neutrality anyway, so who cares if they did or did not investigate the issue? They have made their lack of morals and accountability abundantly clear.
The usual double standards... (Score:3)
[The FCC's general counsel] added that Schneiderman's request for logs of IP addresses would (...) “raise significant personal privacy concerns.”
I love that one, coming from the FCC when, to everyone’s surprise, they published (freely downloadable) the full set of comments [broadcastingcable.com], complete with not only names, but also e-mail address and (if provided) home address of their authors.
Who does our government work for? (Score:1)
The FCC should not have the power to withhold data like this. This is our government. That is our data.
It just shows you who Ajit Pai is working for. (Hint: Unless you're the CEO of Verizon, Ajit Pai is not working for you.)
Let's face it (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's face it- the fix is in.
Net neutrality is going to be removed because doing so will allow large corporations to make a shitload of money, AND because it will stifle the free exchange of information (including important political news and information).
Politicians HATE the fat that ordinary people can use the internet to help track what our government does. They HATE the fact that millions of people can instantly find out what they're doing, and band together to try and effect some change.
This benefits NO ONE except the mega-corps and politicians, and so they're going to do it no matter what we mere mortals want.
clever legal weasels - standing, competence (Score:1)
perhaps the real issue here is the fcc covering up their lack of competence to manage a basic internet information service. The irony hurts. Really, that seems like what this maneuver may accomplish as far as sweeping the key issue under the rug. Just like their handwaving reference to 'our commercial cloud partners' when talking about how their information service will handle the ddos issue. Of course the mind boggling thing is that *presumably* they have effectively the knowledge base of the entire fu
Of course they are (Score:2)
Federal Law Authorizes FCC to Gather Public Input (Score:2)
The FCC's own rulemaking process [fcc.gov] requires it.
However, nothing obligates them to give a rat's ass about what they learn from it. Your tax dollars at work.
Never confuse "We want to hear from you" with "We care about what you say."
Privacy Implications (Score:2)
So releasing the IP addresses would "raise significant privacy concerns," but requiring the name and home address for every comment and making it publicly available on the internet does not? Or are you just afraid that the IP addresses won't remotely match the postal addresses? And that they suspiciously originate from a data center somewhere in Northern Virginia?
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DELETE FROM comments;
Whoops you meant a select? Well they're all gone now.
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Undo, UNDO!!! Click! Click! Click!
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The FCC won't comply with FOIA. They just ignore it. The only way to get the comments is to subpoena them and have an injunction filed preventing them from moving forward with any new net neutrality changes.
Asked for what? (Re:He asked) (Score:2)
WTF? FCC comments are open [fcc.gov] to anyone and searchable [fcc.gov].
Re:He asked (Score:4, Insightful)
The FCC won't comply with FOIA. They just ignore it. The only way to get the comments is to subpoena them ...
Depends. Does the FCC have the same management style as Georgia Election officials [arstechnica.com]?
A server and its backups, believed to be key to a pending federal lawsuit filed against Georgia election officials, was thoroughly deleted according to e-mails recently released under a public records request.
The new e-mails, which were sent by the Coalition for Good Governance to Ars, show that Chris Dehner, one of the Information Security staffers, e-mailed his boss, Stephen Gay, to say that the two backup servers had been "degaussed three times."
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You mean where the FBI had a backup and the deletion of the original was part of standard operating procedure and there was literally no reason or obligation to keep the original?
What was the point in linking that example?
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The records are supposed to be preserved in the case of litigation, furthermore, the Election Commission was given notice and they destroyed the records anyway. So, not standard operating procedure, willful destruction of evidence.
Marilyn Marks, the executive director of the Coalition, a group that is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told Ars that she had issued a litigation hold notice to the defendants.
"They know that they are required to preserve all records when they are sued," she e-mailed. "They don’t need court order. Even IF the SOS office didn’t have three dozen attorneys to tell them to preserve the records, they got this attached letter from us on July 10 and destroyed the second server hard drive on August 9."
Fortunately, it looks like the FBI may have a forensic backup of the data - as noted in "UPDATE 11:40pm ET" at the end of the article.
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... There was no fortunately about it. The FBI recommended what be done with the original.
Again, the FBI had a backup, recommended original re-purpose, all was within standard procedures for a server to be discontinued, and there was no obligation, legal or otherwise, to keep the original. Congrats, any subpoena can get the data... What's the controversy?
You didn't add anything new. If the FCC has the same "management" style it would lawful with backups for other investigations. ... What is the point in lin
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What is wrong with you people?
...but who are now supposed to be believed because they SAY Michael Flynn lied to them?
He did lie to them. He said so himself when he put in a guilty plea. Believe me, I'm no big fan of the plea bargaining system in the US because of the way it rolls over the little guy who can't afford expensive lawyers, but Mike Flynn can afford expensive lawyers. That means, in order to plead guilty of this, they must have had him over a barrel. He plead guilty because he was as guilty as sin and they could have crucified him on much worse charges.
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He did lie to them. He said so himself when he put in a guilty plea. Believe me, I'm no big fan of the plea bargaining system in the US because of the way it rolls over the little guy who can't afford expensive lawyers, but Mike Flynn can afford expensive lawyers. That means, in order to plead guilty of this, they must have had him over a barrel. He plead guilty because he was as guilty as sin and they could have crucified him on much worse charges.
Yes, he pleaded guilty probably because he was. But IIRC, The Feds had his son on stuff too. So perhaps it was also a father's love that was part of his motivation.
The next few months will be fun. 'Scuse me, I need to make some popcorn.
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but Mike Flynn can afford expensive lawyers
How do you figure? By all reports he's now essentially ruined by legal expenses. This wasn't a rich business guy who entered politics, this was a government salary guy.
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When are you boring cunts going to get over your fixation on this particular old woman? I swear, every criticism Trump responds to it's "but Hillary".
It's scary that adults in this century are prepared to be this fucking pathetic.
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Critical of Orange Freak = fake news
Praises Orange Freak = true and real
Gotcha.