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FCC Won't Release DDoS Logs, And Will Probably Honor Fake Comments (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet on the alleged denial of service attack which blocked comments supporting net neutrality.
In a ZDNet interview, FCC chief information officer David Bray said that the agency would not release the logs, in part because the logs contain private information, such as IP addresses. In unprinted remarks, he said that the logs amounted to about 1 gigabyte per hour during the alleged attack... The log files showed that non-human [and cloud-based] bots submitted a flood of comments using the FCC's API. The bot that submitted these comments sparked the massive uptick in internet traffic on the FCC by using the public API as a vehicle...
Bray's comments further corroborate a ZDNet report (and others) that showed unknown anti-net neutrality spammers were behind the posting of hundreds of thousands of the same messages to the FCC's website using people's names and addresses without their consent -- a so-called "astroturfing" technique -- in an apparent attempt to influence the results of a public solicitation for feedback on net neutrality. Speaking to reporters last week, FCC chairman Ajit Pai hinted that the agency would likely honor those astroturfed comments, nonetheless.
Bray's comments further corroborate a ZDNet report (and others) that showed unknown anti-net neutrality spammers were behind the posting of hundreds of thousands of the same messages to the FCC's website using people's names and addresses without their consent -- a so-called "astroturfing" technique -- in an apparent attempt to influence the results of a public solicitation for feedback on net neutrality. Speaking to reporters last week, FCC chairman Ajit Pai hinted that the agency would likely honor those astroturfed comments, nonetheless.
Is this the post-truth world that I keep hearing about?
Why not? He presumably paid good money for them.
as long as they support the narrative of someone in power.
Gee, where have I recently saw that behavior? It's coming to me...
Personally, I hope there is a special place in hell for people like this.
Have gnu, will travel.
One of the advantages of the comment system is they need not listen to a single thing, need not change their mind and can reissue the rule for further comment under the traditional system at any time.
The bad news is this is how our government is actually run and if you take them to court they are the judge with a presumption of correctness! :(
The only way to win is to cheat.
The rules are only there to stop good people from winning.
Anonymizing IPs is rather simple. Poor excuse.
Back when Howard Stern was their main focus they counted every form letter as a unique complaint. So those fringe religious groups would send in a million identical letters and the FCC would count one million complaints.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
> FCC chairman Ajit Pai hinted that the agency would likely honor those astroturfed comments
But since he previously said that "what matters most are the quality of the comments, not the quantity" [1], so we're fine, right, right?
[1] https://consumerist.com/2017/0...
I'd bet a good chunk of my paycheck that, if given the opportunity, Netflix's data wonks would be more than happy to anonymize the data, run a thorough analysis and host the results and raw dataset for free. Well at least as soon as they stopped laughing at the idea that a gig/hour of logging data an hour.
Mr. Pai is essentially saying that DDOSing and astroturfing is OK. This may be the wrong message to send.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
... well at least as soon as they stopped laughing at the idea that a gig/hour of logging data was a lot. // darn twitchy submit finger
The journal has been rotated since the unit was started.
This must be an example FCC comment for why the logs were 1GB an hour.
Seems to me that this would ensure that the comment mechanism is useless.
That's a change for the better. My church used to pass out form letters to send to the FCC to complain about Howard Stern. They should consider those complaints as low quality since they're so low effort.
In regulatory processes of the United States, regulatory bodies are charged with implementing the laws passed by Congress and the president. THAT's where the democratic part of the process is, where vote counts matter.
The regulatory process goes on to seek comments not as a way of redoing the legislative process, but just to make sure all the Ts have been crossed. For every issue brought up in comments (NOT for every comment) the agency has to justify its position.
In short, in the regulatory processes of the US, a million comments with the same concern represent one concern. Pushes by special interests and news organizations to have people submit the same perspective over and over again merely waste governmental resources as workers have to remove the duplicate comments.
Slashdot should do a better job of informing readers about how the regulatory process works. It's misleading to present this story as if the numbers of comments matter directly or to talk about "honoring" fake comments.
Just hack a database of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon employees and flood the system with pro-net neutrality comments.
If the bot's (or bots') comments are to be kept, then is it not reasonable that everyone (legal U.S. citizens) should be able to use a bot to post comments to the FCC?
I mean, if they allow one man's set of bot comments then, legally, don't they have to accept everybody's bots' comments?
If they don't, are they infringing freedom of speech?
My favourite is where the journal fills up with messages that the file-system has run out of space, because the journal is full of messages that the file-system has run out of space ...
What the fuck is wrong with these people
No much different than the ways chosen by the "democratic" elected former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, to uphold the "truth" set up state sponsored public demonstrations in the streets of Caracas, strategically filmed by state controller TV and radio that were broadcasted all over the rural Venezuela. At that time Internet was actively censored by Hugo and further strangled by a planned the divestment in data communication infrastructure accessible to the people.
In today's USA, Trump to uphold his "truth", set up a pseudo-state sponsored and sanctioned "cyber demonstration" using bot machines, no much different of what the Russian citizen that FBI arrested in Spain does but he is accused of being a Spam Kingpin.
Maybe it's time to read about how Hugo Chavez managed to become a Self-proclaimed Dictator when he was a Democratic elected President while retaining the approval of the people.
PS. Probably heard about the unprecedented massive cyberattack the western world suffered, what you may not know is that it started in less than 48h after his arrest, and we don't know if he ever got to the US.
How is this not being investigated as massive fraud and identity theft?
If he does accept the DDoS comments... roll on the eternal DDoS against the FCC, which will have shown that kind of behavior is completely acceptable to them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't what you think. The comments will not change the current decision in the least. The comments are meant to dissuade future admins from trying to change things and cover people when they see the failures of policy. We decided X because of all the public outpouring supporting it. It isn't meant for you, it is meant for other powerful people to use later on down the line.
What a total fuckhead.
It might be DDOS. It might be John Oliver putting up a site to find the comments section after the FCC purposely hid it so people would give up and not comment.
The FCC is refusing to act transparently in the Trump era to avoid accountability either way.
It's pretty damn obvious which comments were fake. They were scrolling through names alphabetically and posting the same comments over and over. Obviously a bot.
The FCC also does not represent the will of the people in any sense. We're going to have to work together to punish the telecoms that use the lack of regulation to burden us with more expense.
I hope he gets cancer
DDoSing and astroturfing the FCC is fair game, did I get that right?
A totally unrelated question, is that LOIC thingamajig still operational?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wouldn't be so quick to say he'll 'honor' theses comments; his mind is made up, and his decisions will be the same, regardless. Unfortunately, this gives them an excuse.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
If there's personal information, send those portions through a one-way hash and release the result. Then we can see activity-level of IP addresses or whatever else without knowing their actual value. This is pretty basic stuff, c'mon.
"Speaking to reporters last week, FCC chairman Ajit Pai hinted that the agency would likely honor those astroturfed comments, nonetheless."
Of course...they support his position.
Couldn't agree more. I see a lot of agencies doing this. One agency just spent a whole bunch of money to buy a bunch of appliance. Then was upset when she realized they all had to be secure and compliant with Federal regulations. We're talking probably a dozen or so physical machines. In the past machines like that were usually $30K a pop, and that was 20 years ago. I bet these were more like $50K pop and all to give an API that probably nobody will use. Seems to be the latest fad, just like Google boxes were years ago. I see them in the back hallways a lot lately, ready to be sent out for surplus.
...probably ring-led the DDoS attack himself.