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The Internal Report Proving the FCC Made Up a Cyberattack (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: An investigation carried out by Federal Communication Commission's own inspector general officially refutes controversial claims that a cyberattack was responsible for disrupting the FCC's comment system in May 2017, at the height of the agency's efforts to kill off net neutrality. The investigation also uncovered that FCC officials had provided congressional lawmakers with misleading information regarding conversations between an FCC employee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cybercrime task force. A report from the inspector general's office (OIG) released Tuesday afternoon states that the comment system's downtime was likely caused by a combination of "system design issues" and a massive surge in traffic caused when Last Week Tonight host John Oliver directed millions of TV viewers to flood the FCC's website with pro-net neutrality comments.

Investigators were unable to "substantiate the allegations of multiple DDoS attacks" alleged by then-FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray, the report says. "At best, the published reports were the result of a rush to judgment and the failure to conduct analyses needed to identify the true cause of the disruption to system availability." [Here's an excerpt from the report:] "While we identified a small amount of anomalous activity and could not entirely rule out the possibility of individual DoS attempts during the period from May 7 through May 9, 2017, we do not believe this activity resulted in any measurable degradation of system availability given the minuscule scale of the anomalous activity relative to the contemporaneous voluminous viral traffic."
Yesterday, before the report was released, FCC chairman Ajit Pai came clean on the fact that the hack of its comment system last year actually took place. Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration for providing "inaccurate information about the incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people."

16 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. False flag fake news propaganda by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't trust the government anymore. They abuse the trust we're forced to give them.

    1. Re:False flag fake news propaganda by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful
      You are not forced to trust the government. That's why we have checks and balances. That's why a free press is essential to a working democracy. That's why you are entitled to challenge in court every governmental decision affecting you.

      No, it's your very task as a citizen not to trust your government, but to keep yourself informed and ready to challenge anything that you don't like, by speaking out, by voting and by going to court, if all else fails. A government is made by humans, and like any humans, it can err, it follows an agenda, open or hidden, and it will be blind to some serious effects of its decisions.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  2. Is anyone surprised? by weilawei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Hey, let's just say we got DDOSed. No one will ever know afterward! We're the government!"

    I'm not surprised, and they have a dangerous mentality as government officials in committing a fraud on the American people.

  3. While you're distratced, EPA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Perhaps you missed this really HUGE news in bad governance:

    https://archpaper.com/2018/08/epa-asbestos-manufacturing/

    EPA, the *ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency", “no longer consider the effect or presence of substances in the air, ground, or water in its risk assessments.”

    Under this rule change, EPA does not consider the *environment* while decided if something is bad for the environment. Hence asbestos, which still kills 40,000 people a year, is now safe and allowed in products, because it's presence in air is no longer considered, so its presence in lungs is no longer considered, so its no longer toxic, according to the EPA.

    So now Uralasbest can now export it from Russia to USA (its no longer made in USA). Here's a stock market quote of this company quoted in Moscow:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/urag?countrycode=ru

    To invest in the Russian stock market, you'll need a Russian trading bank..... Alfabank is one of the biggest of those.

    1+1=2, f**ing Russians.

  4. Is this going to change how anyone votes by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    in either the Mid Term or the next Presidential election? For all the bad press the Trump Admin has gotten (killing NN, the Helsinki debacle, opening trying to start a war with Iran, NK almost immediately going back to missile research after getting us to acknowledge Kim's govt as legitimate, raising inflation/interest rates being used to counter act economic over inflation brought on by those tax cuts for the rich, economic hits from the tariffs, etc, etc) Trump's poll numbers haven't budged an inch.

    I''m starting to get some real fatigue here. Like it does't matter what the hell anyone does because no matter what comes out of this Administration or their party it doesn't change how people vote. At the end of the day if folks are still going to show up and vote for an anti-NN administration then all the dirty laundry in the world is irrelevant. At best it might be of historic interest in a thousand years when archeologists write papers on what the heck went wrong.

    --
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    1. Re:Is this going to change how anyone votes by Gonoff · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The left and right do the exact same thing.

      This would be meaningful if the USA actually had a left. It has a "center", a "Center-Right" (Democrat), a "Far Right" (Republican) and an "Alt-Right".

      Lefties may do the same as righties - but there are few lefties in the USA - perhaps 1 called Bernie Sanders?

      --
      I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
    2. Re:Is this going to change how anyone votes by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

      I haven't seen that. It looks like they've been trending down.

      Looks like they have been pretty damn flat for the past year. https://projects.fivethirtyeig...

      To be clear he still has the worst approval rating is dismal, but then that's where it also started.

    3. Re:Is this going to change how anyone votes by Gonoff · · Score: 3, Informative

      I mentioned your left - Bernie Sanders.

      If you had much of a political left, you would not be famous globally for even your previous president not actually setting up such things as universal health care, welfare state, decent consumer rights, user dapa protection and all the other things that your corporate masters do not think you deserve.

      Can I guess that you do not believe that there is any difference between socialists and communists? Many of your fellow citizens certainly seem to think this. Do you think that the Nazis were socialists because their full party title had that word in it? If so, presumably you think that the old East Germany was a democracy because its name said so. The "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" was as Socialist as the DPRK is democratic or belongs to its people. The USSR may well have been heading towards communism under Lenin. Stalin did not continue that journey and it slid into something that he wanted.

      Those people way off to your left may be in the middle. Where does that mean you are?

      --
      I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
  5. Re:I am absolutely outraged... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh, wait, this took place on the Obama adminstration's watch?

    Not another one. No, this didn't happen during the Obama administration's watch. It happened the first week of May, 2017. Someone else tried to use the "Obama's fault" card yesterday when Ajit Pai first admitted that his agency had not been hacked. How many times does this have to be shot down before you guys give up trying to lie about it?

    https://www.theguardian.com/te...

    Here's the story from last July, so you can track Ajit Pai's weasily and pitiful lie in real time.

    https://gizmodo.com/fcc-now-sa...

    And here's the Slashdot story from yesterday.

    https://it.slashdot.org/story/...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  6. Hey Ajit, some advice... by ToTheStars · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If one person you meet has bad information, well, that's that. If you think that "my office, Congress, and the American people" are all misinformed...maybe the problem is you.

  7. Re:run for the border by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 3

    No the signature move is calling it fake news. This is a refreshing change of pace.

  8. Re: run for the border by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is also quite clear from your post history that you really do not like Trump. Like you really, really do not like Trump. If you were less vehemently opposed to him, I might take what you say a lot more seriously.

    I don't think you get how this works. You don't have to be in favor of someone to criticize them. In fact, the most critical people might be the ones who are...most critical.

    However, if you do have some third party systematic analysis of this that you have used to form your own opinion, I would be more than happy to read it and change my mind.

    Brother, you've come to the right place:

    Here is a comprehensive list of every false claim Donald Trump has made since Inauguration Day to two weeks ago, listed in reverse chronological order and cross-referenced by topic. There are 2,083, and again, that's not counting the past two weeks. Each false claim is accompanied by a citation, and apparently they were pretty conservative when making this list because I can name at least 24 false claims not listed here that Trump made in June and July. This list is under continual review and has been open to challenges. None have been successful so far. Other such projects have put the number at just over 3,000, but let's give our big, wet, boy the benefit of the doubt, shall we?

    http://projects.thestar.com/do...

    Now, the most expansive (and I do mean expansive) list of the false claims of Barack Obama, assembled by a some nutty alt-right too-crazy-for-Breitbart blogger out of rural Pennsylvania, is 1,375. And that's over eight years. Trump as amassed his 2,083 over the course of 1.5 years. That puts him on course to out-lie Barack Obama by a ten to one margin.

    So yes, we haven't seen anything of this scale before. Also, we haven't seen a degenerate president collude with a hostile foreign power to sway an election and attempt to pay them back with policy. So ithe difference isn't just qualitative, it's quantitative. Treason trumps hyperbole every time.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  9. How deep the net has fallen by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Years ago, sites were Slashdotted, nowadays they get Olivered and Colberted.

  10. Re:I am absolutely outraged... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How many times does this have to be shot down before you guys give up trying to lie about it?

    They will never stop lying about it, because for a significant proportion of the electorate all they need to hear is "it's Obama's fault" and they stop listening, move on to the next thing. They never even notice it being debunked.

    The people saying it have a tactic for handling your debunking too. Just watch, one of the replies to your post will demonstrate it. Change the subject, move on to the next lie. You have to remember that they are playing to their audience who is already hostile to your leftist Marxist alt-left MSM biased attacks, they aren't here for a rational debate.

    Slashdot is a little less bad because there is at least a sort of functional moderation system, but in general it's best not to waste too much time on debunking (reacting, playing defence) and just concentrate on getting your own narrative based on the truth out. The "gotcha" take-down is satisfying and even works pretty well as click-bait, but I don't think it really changes people's minds.

    --
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    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. Re: run for the border by tbannist · · Score: 3, Informative

    You are completely missing what I am trying to say. Let us pretend we are attending a conference on qualfonic energy, which is completely made up. Let us suppose that someone has just given an address with a serious criticism of this form of energy. Would you be more likely to trust this criticism if it came from someone who has had nothing good to say about it or from someone who was a major proponent of it? Hopefully you can understand why people might take the comments from the latter person more seriously given no other information.

    Neither. They both have motivations to lie. I'd want to fact check the claims of either person because the first one might be inventing a criticism and the second one may be omitting other major problems. You're a fool if you think either of them is more trustworthy than the other. Furthermore, a proponent admitting a minor flaw, is a classic hustle technique to get you to buy into the product that they're pitching.

    If this were not the case you would understand why a source pointing out all of the things that Trump has lied about or misrepresented is not sufficient proof of your claim. You need to compare it to other politicians and I am not convinced that Trump is significantly worse. He certainly is not a truthful politician, but few are and we tend to forget the myriad lies and cover-ups of controversies that surround past politicians. I suspect that if we were discussing some subject where you were not in agreement with the conclusion, you would be quick to employ the same arguments I have used here, but you dislike Trump so much that your emotions blind you to reason.

    Trump's lies corrode democracy.
    There's a long history of presidential untruths. Here's why Donald Trump is 'in a class by himself.
    How Does Trump Stack Up Against the Best — and Worst — Presidents?
    Trump’s Lies vs. Obama’s
    Donald Trump running the most dishonest White House ever, says historian
    Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter
    Are Clinton and Trump the Biggest Liars Ever to Run for President?

    That is not to say you are a bad person, because everyone is that way about something that they take personally. My point is that in this particular area, you are not a good source absent significant and quality evidence.

    How much evidence do you need? If you're really interested, there's a lot more stuff on Trump's lack of honesty and his place in the world of American politics in respect to that, but I think it's telling that presidential historians (who ought to know quite a bit about past presidents) have (spoilers) ranked him last place out of all of America's presidents. That's pretty unusual, most politicians get ranked in the middle somewhere during their terms, neither best nor worst.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  12. Re:Asbesto danger to lungs by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    In a twisted weird point of view, the EPA is actually right :
    accidental small exposure to asbesto aren't dangerous, it's the chronic long-term exposition that is highly carcinogenic.

    Asbestos is dangerous even in small quantities, because it can easily be lodged in the epithelial wall. It depends mostly on the type of asbestos; shorter fibers mean less ability for cilia to sweep it out of your lungs. Any persistent lung irritant can cause cancer, asbestos is just spectacular at persisting because the body can't break it down.

    --
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