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Was Your Name Stolen To Support Killing Net Neutrality? (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched a new tool for users interested in knowing whether their identity was stolen and used to fraudulently support the FCC's attack on popular net neutrality rules. The NY AG's office announced earlier this month that it was investigating identity theft and comment fraud during the FCC's public comment period. Researchers have noted repeatedly how "someone" used a bot to fill the comment proceeding with bogus support for the FCC plan, with many of the names being those of folks who'd never heard of net neutrality -- or were even dead. The new AG tool streamlines the act of searching the FCC proceeding for comments filed falsely in your name, and lets you contribute your findings to the AG's ongoing investigation into identity theft.
"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," noted Schneiderman. "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," stated the AG. "None." As such, the AG is taking its fight to the public itself.
"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," noted Schneiderman. "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," stated the AG. "None." As such, the AG is taking its fight to the public itself.
Drain the swamp and FILL THE FEDERAL PENITENTIARY. These traitors have to go.
Amen.
my name was used but it was the other guy with the same name. I think he is legit, we just share the same name.
*click* ... in favor of net neutrality? Oh... right. Yeah, that was me. Never mind.
Oh, my god--a hit! *click*
It has my actual address! I can't believe someone used my name to post a comment
When someone says, "Any fool can see
If they're choosing to be complicit in having your name used without your consent, then they're complicit to a crime. If everyone affected sues the FCC, they'll have a fun time dealing with the individual court cases across all the different states!
AC comments get piped to
They apparently had no intent of reading any of them for or against any way :/
Only if you found a legal arguement that might stop them, they decided long ago
Yep, got me here too; even though I have a previous accepted, disseminated comment supporting the Title II restrictions. Funny though how the duplicate got nearly everything right, except where I actually live, and that I might actually not be braindead.
I shouldn't say I'm surprised, I'm not, just oh, oh so jaded.
The Geek in Black
I know my BCD's (when I'm Sober)
Is there ANYONE in the Trump administration, or being appointed by Trump, that is NOT under investigation for some thing or another ?
Not surprising, considering Trump's "illustrious" business carreer and shady, if not downright criminal, business practices.
And now,as president, evidence keeps piling up that his a fucking traitor who colluded with a foreign nation. How could we expect anyone even remotly connected to him to show even a hint of morality, ethics, and plain old basic human decency.
Tell me, Trump supporters, how much longer are you going to try to polish that turd ? Or are you going to again do what you always do: Close your eyes, cover your ears, and repeat time and time again your religious mantra: Fake news ! Fake news ! Fake news !
Yanks are on average the stupidest users on the internet. (The flyover states drag it way down).
I hope they lose their "net neutrality", and end up confined to crappy facebook-only internet packages.
I left it in the parking lot, running, while I ran into the store to buy milk. When I came back out it was gone.
Do you really think the crooked industry shills running the FCC don't know this happened? Do you think they don't know it was the ISPs themselves or someone hired by them who did this?
The entire fucking FCC is pretty much on the payroll of the large ISPs/cable companies, was on the payroll of the large ISPs/cable companies, or will return to being on the payroll of the large ISPs/cable companies.
This entire administration is made up of rich assholes who are doing nothing but giving the wealthy and the corporations carte blanche to fuck us over.
Someone should slap some contempt of court charges on the heads of the FCC and force them to hand it over.
Make no mistake about it, the FCC is refusing to participate because they know the comments are fake, they just don't care because that is the outcome which was paid for.
America has become an oligarchy, it's time to realize that. This administration is full of crooks and thieves who don't know or care what the laws are.
FCC will just claim that because of spam, they didn't take any comments into consideration.
Motherfsckers.
Well, this could be a fun Slashdot poll.
Anybody know how I object to this, besides filling out the NY form?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
... that this has kicked up, it should be pretty much obvious to the powers that be (outside and inside the FCC) that people want net neutrality, aren't in favour of 'paid speed lanes' and want a kind of level playing field
Or is politics literally that shit that your public servants are no longer public servants, but business servants?
(UK user here, so, ignorant/whatever I suppose, but it seems nuts!)
I just checked, and surprisingly sometime in early August, some douche submitted a fraudulent one on my behalf. I'm contacting my local state attorney general.
Supreme Leader Lord Trump has said it's bad, therefore it is bad. MAGA
But not the name you're seeing here.
And the comments are so botty.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm glad I saw this. Found both my real comment (pro NN) at my home address and that really common fake anti title II comment using my work address.
The fake was submitted in august. Sometime in the last 3-6 months I started getting spam phone calls to my work, using my name. Makes me wonder if they are related.
I filled out the AG's complaint page for whatever that is worth, even though I don't live in NY
My 90 year old grandparents are both on this list... They don't even own a computer, smart phones, or have an internet connection, but apparently they have very strong opinions about the internet's future!
Anyone else concerned that his tool clearly lists out peoples names and addresses?
A simple facebook lookup with some of these anti-net neutrality posts on the government website shows me exactly who these people are and where they live, plus all the crap FB shows users...
Privacy nightmare anyone?
Someone stole my identity and here is what they posted:
"The Obama-era FCC regulations known as "Title II" enable the federal government to exert an extraordinary and unnecessary amount of regulatory control over the internet. This bureaucratic overreach impedes innovation, stifles investment and continues to create economic uncertainty for one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy. I support Chairman Pai's proposal to roll back Title II and restore the sensible regulatory framework that enjoyed broad bipartisan consensus and enabled the internet to thrive for more than two decades. I strongly urge all of the FCC Commissioners to support the Chairman's proposal to repeal the harmful Title II internet takeover."
Such bullshit!
58 hits and I can't see a way to filter out the city/state.
Yes, yes it was. Now What? Because slashdot tells me this is not a valid comment. Because having my ID stolen apparently doesn't matter in the grant scheme of geek-ness. Thanks, thanks a lot!
Eric Schneiderman, who is on record characterizing voter fraud as an "imaginary problem," has decided to beat his chest and make political hay out of the idea that people may have misappropriated identities for something that wasn't even a vote . I wish I could say I was surprised.
There I am.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
That's essentially been the status quo since the Eisenhower administration =/
I clicked on a few of them. I think there were maybe 2 or 3 form letters spammed across all of them. No wonder they said 'screw listening to that'. It is so manipulated you can not even tell who is who.
Are you a sell out?
My name too appears in the list, NONE of my pro-NN comments though! And someone used my name and my old address I haven't lived in since 2006!
Wow. I'm on there. Oddly, making the case FOR net neutrality. So I'm not sure if I should be upset or thankful they wrote such a well-worded message for me.
Still, can't believe they had me in there. Name and address.
As someone with a reasonably common first name and last name, this tool is a waste of time. Maybe it will be useful for the few people who have a unique name.
or were even dead
My grandparents voted Republican their entire lives. They have voted Democrat ever since.
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." -- Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography, 1913
I'd say its been the status quo further back than Eisenhower.
Anyone else concerned that his tool clearly lists out peoples names and addresses?
Yes, as American Airlines would say, those in favor of maintaining net neutrality would need to be reaccommodated. I don't doubt that my ISP will find a way to do so.
I found a couple that looked like {firstname} smith and Susan {lastname} why would you even accept those characters in the name field? Never mind that they both had word for word identical comments.
Why are you using Gmail to begin with? Use StartMail or ProtonMail if you care about not being ad mined.
I have a very rare last name but found relatives I never knew existed living in St. Joseph, MI using the tool.
Proud to say my fellow namesakes all supported net neutrality.
There was one shill that didn't, but his first is my last and vice versa... and clearly a partisan hack.
Mueller Ain't Going Away?
doesn't matter if the feds are running it or not.
there were bogus names FOR and AGAINST NN.
Trying to figure out how many people support it or don't support it is not possibly by looking at the FCC's polling.
And more importantly, does anyone really care?
Let us say for the sake of argument that the polling were totally 100 percent accurate... would that change anyone's opinion on the matter? Nope. So why does it matter when its a dumpster fire? It doesn't.
Its a joke.
There is corruption on the issue everywhere. For AND against are both corrupt.
There are arguments to do it either way for various reasons.
The FOR campaign can point to bad behavior by monopolistic agencies that abuse consumers.
The AGAINST campaign can point to bad behavior by monopolistic agencies that abuse consumers.
BOTH sides accuse the other of being in the pocket of billion dollar mega corporations.
Consider that NN and anti-NN are both right at the same time for the same reason. Consider that the corruption is bigger and thus encompasses both positions at once.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I don't care what the other hundred fake me's might have spammed, here's the deal. I and most of my friends are conservative southerners, some more hardcore than others. A group of us had a discussion today on this and I was expecting to clash with them on the issue, but surprising enough, everyone seemed to be in unanimous agreement that Ajit Pai's argument was flawed or at least that ending net neutrality was bad. Some of us also find it concerning that particular republicans who were otherwise thought to be a voice of reason are on board with abolishing net neutrality, and that leaves us kind of conflicted.
Not sure where I heard this, but I remember a saying to the effect of... yall can do whatever you want to Americans, but don't ever get between their couch and their T.V. I kind of feel for similar reasons, railroading this could really backfire for Republicans. IMO, ending neutraility probably won't last because it would create too much of an uproar, but you can bet Republicans will have a hard time living down the mess from trying. This all doesn't make a lick of sense to me except that this guy is a crook. They need to drain this dude at the FCC with the rest of the swamp as far as I'm concerned. This whole thing stinks like a load of crap if you ask me.
Before leaving office, the Obama Administration rammed through a massive scheme that gave the federal government broad regulatory control over the internet. That misguided policy decision is threatening innovation and hurting broadband investment in one of the largest and most important sectors of the U.S. economy. I support the Federal Communications Commission's decision to roll back Title II and allow for free market principles to guide our digital economy.
This is highly suspicious because these two don't agree on ANYTHING.
And I see several of the same form letter attached to lots of other people with my surname.
The fake bullshit posts are soooo plentiful, and all anti common carrier.
for what its worth, for those interested - I got six hits. But they were for other addresses which may or may not be real.. 3 were pro-neutrality, 3 were anti-neutrality.
The pro neutrality ones were unique and well written, in general, maybe with one or two spelling mistakes. Short, and fairly to the point.
The anti-neutrality ones? well, here's an example of one of them. They were all like this or similar ones with words replaced. Its just a giant block of what looks to be randomly cut out of a much larger body of generated text or scraped data.
"which reclassified broadband as a public utility | well this language here is solid, in terms of a public utility the internet is a bulletin board no dissimilar to what you would find in a coffee shop. It's a public bulletin board. It is a public utility and it was created by the public for the public and the public has done the most work on the internet and has invested the most in the internet for every unit of investment an ISP has put into the internet the public has collectively put in 1,000,000 units of investment and quite frankly the public's interests outweigh the ISP's interests in terms of clout when it comes to the internet to whit the internet was created to be a public bulletin board and ISP's need to be informed that now that the metaphor that represents the internet has been created we can inform ISP's that the internet can be closed and we CAN go to an analog internet involving notebooks, binders, folders, we can live in a city where someone sees something on a coffee shop bulletin board and then write a note in their ledger and hands it off to their local man on the street right outside and go about their day WE DO NOT NEED THE INTERNET that needs to be said, word of mouth got us to the internet, and quite frankly internet service providers can charge as much as they want to provide internet service access because they provide the access to the internet as a private enterprise and let the economy speak if i know only the lindner's in cincinnati ohio could get access to the internet because they charged what the rate should be at $1,000,000 an hour to quote unquote surf the web I in my knowledge of things would move in ways that would provide the internet to people on the ground by developing websites on a local drive computer and saving websites on a thumb drive and there may be people that think they are a monopoly but not after all of the exposure that we have been given to the internet there is not a generation genius that eats at the genius bar at apple and we grew up with this and the finest thing ISP's could do noting the classification of broadband as a public utility is to work keep working keep providing access and conduct a collection of taxes to offset the living expenses of those involved internet service providing and we can afford a free internet but it is tax supported we pay a fee once a year at tax season instead of monthly fees and everyone gets access in the united states of america and we can experience something fluid in our economy to the extent that similar to a start from nothing business you work with what you have access to for nothing including skills and tools you have acquired and ISP's and the PUBLIC want a funded free internet ( note funded free internet is new language ) and we want our business platform and then in the next session of congress we can begin discussing PUBLIC UTILITIES WITHIN THE PUBLIC UTILITY such as facebook and twitter"
We have a unique last name (in the US we're *all* from the same family; there's a few German folks with our name but even that's not a lot of them). I happen to know all my relatives.
When I searched my last name there were three hits, one was an entry for someone who doesn't exist but who shared my last name. To be more sure there I wasn't forgetting someone, I searched both Google and Ancestry and those searches essentially said the person doesn't exist.
But according to all the verbiage on the form, the ONLY person who can object is the person named. If that person doesn't exist, who is there to speak out for them?
(The other two were me, in favor of NN, and another I'll have to ask my uncle if he was against NN - I'm pretty positive he wasn't and isn't, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt - as long as he has an opinion I'm fine with whatever that opinion is).
Looks like the spambots are stealing cartoon character identities also.. misspelled even. Ha. https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filin...
I found this one, with my wife's aunt's correct name and address: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filin...
Only problem is that she died in 2006.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Is it me or this is a public way to mine everyone's addresses and names? Kinda scary I can find all the fcc posts with just a simple search. Maybe I should write to my relatives more often.
My name is extremely common. There are 60 results, looking at the comments it actually has the State and City though. But, there is most certainly something strange going on here...MANY of these comments say exactly the same thing! Both "sides" are copy n pasting.
His home address:
Ajit Pai
4868 Old Dominion Dr
Arlington, VA 22207-2743
What you do with that information is up to you. But to get you started, here is an idea...
It was done by Obama, so Trump has to "undo" it. It doesn't seem to matter what it is, that is Trump's mission. If Obama had passed an Executive Order saying "the planet we are on is called Earth" then Trump revoke that and would change it's name too. Or would say "I call it the Earth; no one has ever called it that before me. I came up with that name."
I put in my name and got nearly 120 results found. But most of them didn't share either my first or last name. A lot of them did share my name though and everyone I checked put in something other than my own address. Okay, when I put my name in quotes I only got about 50 hits and most seemed to actually share my name but there's still no way to narrow it down further.
I have no reason to doubt that those people are real. But I couldn't punch in my name and ZIP code and I'm not going to click on that many names just to check each one of them and what if I found something? Who would I call?
Oh right - I click on a link and report it and then what - do I really think that would do anything?
This whole idea on anonymous online petitions is stupid. Don't tell me it's not anonymous just because you have to put in a name. I can think of thousands of fake names.
I just searched for "donald trump" and got over 1600 results, but it's searching the comments too. Most of these people mentioned "donald trump" in the comments but they're not claiming to be named donald trump.
One person did claim to be named Donald Trump and lists his address as 600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (I know, the WH is at 1600 Pennsylvania, but does trump know that? Do his supporters?)
How would anyone go about separating the fake from the real for something like this?
I actually agree with "donald trump" of 600 Pennsylvania Avenue but I suspect that's neither his real name nor his real address.
The FCC has a published API for bulk submission of comments. Why is anyone surprised that someone took the phone book and posted a bunch of bogus comments from everyone from Aaron Aaronson to Zebediah Zywiec? https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/public-api-docs.html
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I get 149 results for my name. I think a tool with a crawler needs to be created, so that only results with both my name and, say, my zip code are returned. I'm not going to manually click through 149 results to see if any use my address.
Fraud involving a value of more than a few K is a felony in most US states.
This is not the first time that the cable & telecommunications cabal has done this.
The officers should go to prison.
The companies should lose all monopoly protections and be forced to pay back the subsidies they pocketed.
In all the years I've used Pale Moon, I believe there have been only two sites that made it hang so badly I had to kill it: Microsoft's Download Catalog and, now, the FCC's search page. Well, I guess that's one of the things other browsers are for...
As for the search itself, I have a really common name, so for me it was comparable to Republican state secretaries of state's use of Interstate Crosscheck. (They used first and last names alone to conclude duplicate registration and strike voters from the rolls, even though more personally identifying data, like middle names and dates of birth, were available.) Most of my namesakes were pro-net-neutrality, a couple were anti-regulation, "pro-innovation" shills, and I even found a comment of my own (pro-net-neutrality) ... with the right street address but the wrong city and state. Curious, that. Normally, I'd wonder whether it would be grounds for my comment being excluded from consideration, but since Pai announced publicly that he wouldn't be taking comments into account anyway, it's probably a moot point.
You can actually put your zip in the search box along with your name. It seems to be searching all the fields in the submission.
No I actually support filling it.