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FCC Should Prove DDoS Attacks Stopped Net Neutrality Comments (networkworld.com)
New submitter Michelle Davidson writes: After John Oliver urged viewers of HBO's Last Week Tonight to fight again for net neutrality and post comments in support of it, people hit a wall — the FCC's site essentially crashed. Originally, it was believed that the number of people trying to access the site caused the problem, but then the FCC released a statement saying "multiple" DDoS attacks -- occurring at the same time Oliver sent viewers to the site -- caused the site to crash: "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." The group Fight for the Future doesn't buy it, though, and wants proof. It says the FCC should release the logs: "The FCC should immediately release its logs to an independent security analyst or major news outlet to verify exactly what happened last night. The public deserves to know, and the FCC has a responsibility to maintain a functioning website and ensure that every member of the public who wants to submit a comment about net neutrality has the ability to do so. Anything less is a subversion of our democracy." No word yet from the FCC on whether it will release its logs, leading the interwebs to speculate about whether it was actually an attack to prevent commenting or if the FCC is ill-prepared to handle large amounts of traffic and blamed DDoS attacks to cover their inabilities. People are even questioning whether the FCC's tech team knows what a DDoS attack is.
I am not a specialist but looking at the comments it seems that a bot has been posting the same text *against net neutrality* (starting with "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation..."). It looks like a bot because the messages appear to come from people that posted in alphabetical order of their first name/last name combination: Brittany Mccain, Brittany Proctor, Brittany Sharp, etc. in the view sorted by date posted. https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/searc...
Just incredible how this administration is basically trying to re-write history...
Whether or not it was a DDoS attack, the thing is, this already happened in the past, for the exact same reason. So regardless if there was a DDoS attack or not, the website would've come down the same way:
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
That link there? It's from 2014, despite looking exactly like past weekend. That was the moment when this matter should've been settled. No need for clowns with extremely punchable faces like Ajit Pai to try to reverse it in any way, if public comment even mattered. The public opinion has been heard on this, they are already ignoring whatever comments were made in the past. People don't need to be doubtful whether public comment is being heard or not... it clearly isn't.
Question is exactly the same, the fears are exactly the same of 2014, net neutrality did not change since then nor it's reasons to exist.
The companies along their greed to make more money on costumers also didn't change... if anything, it only grew.
Now they also have a whole lot more politicians in their pockets, people who are willing to go against public comments because they have their heads stuck in their asses. Remember people, it was only 3 years ago that the public outcry for net neutrality happened. All this administration is doing is reversing what people conquered. This would be unacceptable in any decent democracy, but here we are held prisioners by an administration that refuses to listen.
Fight for the Future has all the reasons to be suspicious about this, because pretty much anyone can claim that a website crash was not because of unpredicted access numbers but rather some coordinated attack of some form. But ultimately, the violation has already happened. When you have an administration that is this willing to bend over for corporations wishes, it doesn't matter if they revert something or not, they'll find a way to bend laws and turn a blind eye to violations. Net neutrality has ended as soon as Ajit Pai got the chair. Whether net neutrality crashes or not, I guarantee we'll be seeing problematic behaviours arising plenty soon.
It's not so much what's on paper, but rather the signals politicians send with stuff like these.