Slashdot Mirror
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
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
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.
Seems to me that this would ensure that the comment mechanism is useless.
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.