Slashdot Mirror
FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies To Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims: Gizmodo (gizmodo.com)
As the FCC was grappling with accusations of a fake cyberattack last spring, it intentionally misled several news organizations, choosing to feed journalists false information, while at the same time discouraging them from challenging the agency's official story, news outlet Gizmodo reported Tuesday. From the report: Internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo lay bare the agency's efforts to counter rife speculation that senior officials manufactured a cyberattack, allegedly to explain away technical problems plaguing the FCC's comment system amid its high-profile collection of public comments on a controversial and since-passed proposal to overturn federal net neutrality rules.
The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurred -- not to the reporters who've requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers who've demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened.
The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurred -- not to the reporters who've requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers who've demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened.
This was an administration openly elected to inflict cruelty on those that expected anything meaningful from shared governance.
Fake information to support absurd lies is kind of their "thing".
Outrage SHOULD be expected, but we're being trained to turn off all our mental alarms against everything important we used to care about.
At covering up fraudulent activity. Ajit Pai and his regime is a group of criminals who are funded via ISP and telecom providers to give them precisely what they want, no matter how much it affects his constituents OR the world at large.
The Trump administration and their Pravda - Fox News - spread stupid and easily disproven lies to advance their agenda. And me here without my heart pills handy...Damn!
It seems to me that the issue is more a combination of incompetence and wishful thinking than it is an FCC conspiracy.
John Oliver asks his viewers to go to the FCC site and post comments supporting net neutrality. To a less-competent sysadmin, that surge of traffic may look like a DDoS. He mentions the possibility and it percolates up to guys like Pai. Pai is thrilled that there is a malicious, technical explanation for this event, because it allows him to dismiss the notion that a significant proportion of people may support net neutrality. Public support for NN doesn't fit within Pai's pre-constructed worldview, so he's more comfortable not facing that possibility.
Bots abuse the FCC comment API to manufacture millions of fake comments against NN. At the time the attack was ongoing, I happened to be looking at the FCC page, trying to make a comment of my own, and I watched the automated comments pouring in. They were coming in at multiple comments per second, all with identical text, and in alphabetical order by the name of the commentor. It was blindingly obvious that someone had just set up a script that created comments from a database of names and addresses. But Pai refuses to investigate, insisting that all of those comments are obviously legitimate. Of course all those comments are real, because they support his pre-constructed worldview. It just makes sense to him.
And after all the incompetence and confirmation bias, after publicly stating a bunch of things that turned out to be bullshit, they don't want to investigate, they don't want anyone else to investigate, and they don't want to provide any information. Because the results will make them look either partisan or stupid. And we'll tolerate a certain amount of either of those things, but there's a chance this would go too far.
Seriously, is there even one appointee that Trump made that is even halfway honest and above-board? Or are they all really corrupt and/or incompetent and/or have their own secret agenda that has nothing to do with protecting and serving the United States?
This was an administration openly elected to inflict cruelty on those that expected anything meaningful from shared governance.
Uh... not it wasn't. Grow up.
Fake information to support absurd lies is kind of their "thing".
This is not specific to the current administration, and in fact there's a move afoot to remove, or "drain", the current situation, or "swamp", of people who abuse the system. Especially of people who abuse the system for political gain.
Outrage SHOULD be expected, but we're being trained to turn off all our mental alarms against everything important we used to care about.
And of this I agree. This is a serious breach of trust in government, and while I've generally been giving Ajit Pai a pass because of TDS, this is where we can reasonably be outraged and call for his removal.
1) First order of business: Is this report true? There need to be an unambiguous case of intentionally misleading the public, exposed by the E-mails and with no reasonable other explanation.
(I somehow doubt that this is the case, since it's so obviously easy to uncover, but it would be nice to get some consensus analysis, and maybe an admission and apology from some people at the FCC.)
2) Secondly, who actually did the lying? It's entirely possible that this was done at a low level and not reported to Ajit Pai. It's entirely possible that this was done by appointees from another administration/FCC chairman, and so on.
It's also possible that Ajit Pai knew and condoned it, but let's find out the facts.
3) Thirdly, assuming we have actual people and actual infractions (possibly including Pai), what steps can we take in response?
FCC policy is not the biggest issue on everyone's minds right now, immigration is. Using this to bring down the president is a non-starter, and backing anyone who is also against the president's immigration plan is a planned failure.
With that in mind, what concrete steps can we take in order to yank the FCC's leash?
I've never felt that Change.org petitions are worth anything, but with enough support they do get a response from the WH.
Is that the logical next step?