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Senators Demand FCC Answer For Fake Comments After Realizing Their Identities Were Stolen (gizmodo.com)
Two US senators -- one Republican, one Democrat who both had their identities stolen and then used to post fake public comments on net neutrality -- are calling on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to address how as many as two million fake comments were filed under stolen names. From a report: Senators Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, are among the estimated "two million Americans" whose identities were used to file comments to the FCC without their consent. "The federal rulemaking process is an essential part of our democracy and allows Americans the opportunity to express their opinions on how government agencies decide important regulatory issues," the pair of lawmakers wrote [PDF].
"As such, we are concerned about the aforementioned fraudulent activity. We need to prevent the deliberate misuse of Americans' personal information and ensure that the FCC is working to protect against current and future vulnerabilities in its system. We encourage the FCC to determine who facilitated these fake comments," the letter continues. "While we understand and agree with the need to protect individuals' privacy, we request that the FCC share with the public the total number of fake comments that were filed."
"As such, we are concerned about the aforementioned fraudulent activity. We need to prevent the deliberate misuse of Americans' personal information and ensure that the FCC is working to protect against current and future vulnerabilities in its system. We encourage the FCC to determine who facilitated these fake comments," the letter continues. "While we understand and agree with the need to protect individuals' privacy, we request that the FCC share with the public the total number of fake comments that were filed."
It was posted yesterday.
They need to know how it feels.
The comment form probably looked like this:
Comment: _______________________________________
Please enter your name: _____
Please enter your address: _____
[ ] Check this box to certify this is really you.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
It has been common knowledge that millions of comments were forged and faked from day one. An estimated 2 million American's stolen identities to post fake comments on an incredibly important issue doesn't matter -- until it's just 2 American Senators? What's wrong with this picture?
43 States require nothing more that a bank statement or student ID to register to vote. They show proof of residency, but not proof of citizenship.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I've worked the polls for two elections here in South Carolina. Sad thing is that even though I'm nearly forty, I think I was less than half of the age of any of the other volunteers. I wish more young people would decide to be involved with this important task. We can't ask for ID or a voter registration card. We can only ask for a name that we then match with a voting record in a fanfold printout then ask if that is the correct address. There's a lot of church buses that drop off a load of African Americans that don't even look at the book when asked if that's the correct record. They just give a common name and say yes and don't even verify the address when asked. We can't legally ask for an ID or keep them from voting even if we know they're lying. We also aren't allowed to ask them to verify the address. That's a huge problem here since there's so fewer last names on average than in the rest of the country that isn't the South.
Or did someone just put their name in the name field and click submit?
I don't know of any commenting system that accurately connects a real person to a comment. You don't think people call me Sycodon, do you?
Well, maybe they do. But that's besides the point.
What do these Senators suggest be done? Force people to register and show ID?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
In other news: there's no reason to ask for ID when voting in federal elections.
There really isn't, you should have had your identity determined when you registered to vote.
Or, following the lead of countries with much higher voter turnout, get rid of the requirement to register to vote, and auto-register all citizens. Voter registration is just a bottleneck designed to make it harder for the destitute to vote.
Every now and then you get a nice little quote when you read TFA. This was my favorite from this one:
The FCC comment process is, in other words, a complete shitshow
get rid of the requirement to register to vote, and auto-register all citizens.
Thus creating a much larger pool of people who have no interest in the process and have no intention of voting, but are registered to do so. In other words, everyone because a target for identity theft by people who cast multiple votes.
Voter registration is just a bottleneck designed to make it harder for the destitute to vote.
Registering to vote costs nothing, so your asinine excuse is just that. Registration is how you validate that each person who votes is authorized to do so. Unless your goal is to allow people who have no right to vote access to the polls, then you have no reason not to support registration and identification.
"While we understand and agree with the need to protect individuals' privacy," Note this does not include those that are impersonating real people whom you are actually required to protect. The scoundrels that posted many times using our names using several fake addresses around the country can be drawn and quartered and then boiled in oil on the spot. -- your Senator
Well, getting at the heart of the question, was the Constitution written for the United states, or the world? Does our constitution guarantee these rights for everyone regardless of their nationality? I guess what I'm asking is if the constitution is what provides the right, and the constitution doesn't cover all people, then at some level it seems to make sense to verify the potential voter is in fact covered by the constitution... otherwise you're the biggest bank in town leaving your vault wide open while loudly proclaiming "please don't come in to this open vault and take anything that isn't yours."
My admittedly not very educated opinion, is that the effort required to _effectively_ vote (i.e. researching the candidates and issues prior to casting your vote) requires so much more effort than registering to vote, that it doesn't seem a very high barrier to voting to ask someone to be registered, or else vote provisionally. I guess what I'm saying is that if it is your civic duty to vote, then is it not also your duty to educate yourself on the issues on which you cast your vote? Otherwise, what would be the point of voting? It seems to me like the democratic process elevates itself above mob rule by this very mechanism, namely, being educated on the issues rather than voting based on what your chatty neighbor over the fence told you?
I agree with you that voting is not like driving, and surely to deny anyone the right to legally vote is a grievous issue. However I also argue that voting does not start when you walk up to the voting machine.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Which takes less effort, rigging the voting machines or physically impersonating voters?
Which has greater risk, rigging the voting machines, which have no real audit trail, or physically impersonating voters, where the likelihood of getting cause increases drastically with every single vote?
Which has greater reward, rigging the voting machines, allowing you to control all of the votes, or paying someone at least minimum wage to vote and travel?
If meatbag impersonation is anywhere near the top of your list of electoral concerns, you need to take a goddamn remedial statistics class, and burn your fucking nerd card, because nobody with a functioning brain would use that kind of method alone. The machines you mentioned had bribery as their core mechanism, with voter fraud being occasionally used a supplement, only practical because they CONTROLLED THE ENTIRE ELECTION APPARATUS in the first place, and that was the important part.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This isn't about due process (Due Process being a right described in the Constitution's fifth and fourteenth amendments in relation to being deprived of life, liberty, or property when accused of a crime), or evidence of wrong doing. It is about access control. Perhaps we should not require passwords on logon to operating systems unless we have evidence that people have been logging on fraudulently. Perhaps we should not require proof of ID to cash checks until we have evidence that people are cashing checks fraudulently. Perhaps we should not require ID or a permit to carry a firearm (another constitutional right). If the voting system was generally only accessible to citizens, then perhaps we wouldn't need such access control. But it is easily accessible to non-citizens, based on the number of non-citizens resident in the United States. If some states are registering to vote anyone who gets a driver's license, without guaranteeing citizenship first, then even being registered to vote doesn't guarantee citizenship. Try using a Voter Registration card to prove you are a citizen the next time you do business with the federal government...
If, in fact, only citizen's are supposed to be voting, then it is not depriving anyone of a right to make sure that they ARE a citizen before allowing them to vote, so long as the process of validating their citizenship isn't itself used to disenfranchise someone. And there is the rub, isn't it?
You're damn fucking right I'm nasty. Politics is inherently on a scale beyond what our brains can intuitively understand. Civility has no place in politics, otherwise manipulative cunts like you hide behind someone saying mean words.
As for why you can't pull off voter impersonation, it's for the same reason that cleaning a football stadium with a toothbrush is ineffective. It's mathematically absurd. Plus, the risk of getting caught grows exponentially with every single vote cast. Any other method of influencing an election would be more effective and less risky.
This is slashdot, so we know better. If you seriously think that the best attack vector by far isn't the voting machines, fucking kill yourself.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If, in fact, only citizen's are supposed to be voting, then it is not depriving anyone of a right to make sure that they ARE a citizen before allowing them to vote, so long as the process of validating their citizenship isn't itself used to disenfranchise someone. And there is the rub, isn't it?
And there's the rub. My country has required ID to vote for the longest time, it was minimal ID to prove residency, not citizenship and there was the option of signing an affidavit if you had no ID.
Right wing government gets power and gets advice from the Republicans, they make the ID requirements way more onerous, which disenfranchised my son who only had a birth certificate, CARE (medical) card and student ID. Given more time he could have paid the $75 for ID after traveling close to a hundred mile round trip to the government office but he wasn't motivated enough. It's a long walk or 2 day Greyhound trip.
For my wife it was even worse. She'd always voted under her maiden name, all her ID was in her maiden name, and we checked the government web site the day before the election to make sure we were both registered, her in her maiden name. Upon going to vote, her registration had mysteriously changed to my name, which she had no ID for. Fun of being a minority who the government expects to vote against that government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism