Slashdot Mirror
FCC Chairman Admits Russia Meddled In Net Neutrality Debate (engadget.com)
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has admitted that around 500,000 comments submitted during the net neutrality public comment period were linked to Russia email addresses. "Pai noted in a court filing that most of the comments were in favor of net neutrality, which the FCC repealed last December," reports Engadget. From the report:
The New York Times and BuzzFeed News have filed freedom of information requests in the hopes of uncovering the extent of fraudulent comments and Russian influence in the net neutrality process. Pai's filing was part of an FCC memorandum that addressed the requests, and the agency has argued that releasing the data could expose the U.S. to cyberattacks.
Pai's concession underscores how Russia's influence on U.S. democracy extends beyond headline-grabbing election interference and fake news peddling, and it also reflects the litany of issues the FCC faced during the net neutrality comment period. Over half of the almost 22 million comments came from phony, temporary or duplicate email addresses, according to a study, and reportedly only 17.4 percent of the comments were unique.
Pai's concession underscores how Russia's influence on U.S. democracy extends beyond headline-grabbing election interference and fake news peddling, and it also reflects the litany of issues the FCC faced during the net neutrality comment period. Over half of the almost 22 million comments came from phony, temporary or duplicate email addresses, according to a study, and reportedly only 17.4 percent of the comments were unique.
emails!
3.14 years solitary confinement.
'only 17.4 percent of the comments were unique.'
I truly wonder what % of responses were exact copies of what John Oliver told viewers to submit on Last Week tonight.
THEY MAUL. :) lol
[($)]
Theyve lied already. Now trying to paint support for net neutrality as russian interference.
Net Neutrality dies in 10 days. If you want it back you'll have to vote the bums out. And that means _all_ of them. You'll need to give a super majority of NN supporters the House, Senate and then a NN supporter the presidency. Otherwise whichever chamber they hold onto (Senate probably) will just keep blocking it and eventually you'll forget about it and move on with your lives; one more freedom shot down, one more victory lost.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Most of you here on Slashdot are supporting a side Russia is strongly supporting. Doesn't that tell you anything about how wrong it is to support Net Neutrality as the FCC had it?"
Huh? Why? Are you unable to think for yourself, so you just have a knee-jerk reaction that anything the Russians might be for, for any reason, you're against?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
When it was done in such an easy to detect way one has to question the motives. If it was a state based attack, they are capable of doing a much better job than illustrating how the FCC didn't filter it's comments for duplicate emails...
If they want to be caught on 1 level, it can undermine the side they are supporting by lowering the credibility of that side as a bunch of hackers and not REAL people. On another level it can look like the SuperKendall thinks it does because they assume you think they really are that sloppy.
Helping the telcos only makes people upset and stand up more against the corruption; Russian tactics are the opposite. They want you to feel powerless and cynical as hell. So helping telcos cheat can do that to some degree but past a certain point it does good long term; as reforms can happen. The goal is to make reform so pointless people won't bother. Killing grassroots reform by undermining it does far more damage; getting the culture to discourage all traits that keep things functioning.
Like having provocateurs throwing rocks at cops in a peaceful protest; encouraging the fools and nutcase fringe to unknowingly harm their side by empowering them; otherwise, they'd be largely ignored by their own side. This way protesters and cops get divided even more despite it becoming public later that only 2 people involved; or even if 1 of the two was fake.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The United States of America must not be governed by company installed sycophants.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Ridiculous.
According to the very study cited, while most of the emails might not have been legit, of the ones that WERE, fully 99.7 of them supported Net Neutrality.
And there are a lot of VERY damned good reasons for that, too.
What I don't get is why he was featured in propaganda: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...
Why would he want to placate people in such a transparent way and taunt people and take sides instead of taking a diligent role in objectively looking into the issues of concern, or why he would refuse to help investigate the comments.
This truly shows how out of touch and ineffective he is.
Twinstiq, game news
Just in case that needs clarifying:
Of the approximately 3,828,000 legitimate email comments received by FCC:
3,816,516 were in favor of Net Neutrality.
Only 11,484 were not.
Obviously the numbers are subject to rounding error. But rounding error is pretty irrelevant when the majority is that overwhelming.
And here is a wookie. The defence rests your honour.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
the courts have been packed with pro-corporate judges for 30,40 years. They'll throw in with the side of property on this one. The EPA stuff is a bit easier to grasp since the ones that have been challenged have pretty immediate implications for the water table. NN doesn't really affect them. Worst case it doubles their cable bill but that'll be more than offset by the stock they own in AT&T and Comcast going up in value.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has alleged evil Russians were involved, so as to distract you from the fact 99% of legitimate responses were in fact in favour of keeping net neutrality.
I find your argument compelling.
Maybe they just want us to have fast internet. For when they finally release the pee tape.
Did the internet improve under the new federal NN rules?
The same approved and NN ready paper insulated wireline kept the monopoly net slow for many.
Federal NN rules protected a set of monopoly telcos from new competition.
Remove the federal rules and let communities innovate as they need.
Why should every wealthy community be held back under standardized federal NN rules?
Think of what communities can create if an existing monopoly telco will not upgrade.
A wealthy community can ask for its own community broadband now they are free of federal rules. Free of a federally protected existing approved NN monopoly telco.
Innovate and let advanced new networks get planned for wealthy communities that can pay for their very own community broadband upgrades.
More federal NN rules will not build new networks.
An existing monopoly telco might upgrade its protected network one day.
Bring in new community broadband free of complex federal NN rules and enjoy advanced internet now.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Of non-mass spammed comments, the hugely vast majority (99.7%) were in favor of NN. So, if none of the Russian emails were in favor of NN, it would drop to only 99.2% of people were in favor. If half a percent (0.5%) of the Russian comments were anti-NN, that would leave it at 100% in favor.
That said, the non-mass spammed numbers came from this. I hope those numbers were correct.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You don't understand. Pai is there to lay the groundwork for removal of some of the regulatory functions of the FCC and moving them to the Congress where they belong. He's there as a vivid demonstration that unelected bodies are unsuitable for regulation of what amounts to constitutional rights (speech). Shit, even elected bodies are barely suitable. They'd much rather you didn't have any of those pesky amendments, especially the first few, but thankfully for us the founding fathers foresaw that, and implemented a bear of a procedure to change anything in the Constitution.
Jokes on them! The FCC didnâ(TM)t read *any* of the public comments regarding net neutrality!
This is the best that you can come up with for the new party line? "Net neutrality is a Russian plot to destroy the Internet"? That's not even clever.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Its great for think tanks, political NGO and the deep state news to play up all sides of Russian fiction.
Consider the pro NN rule side with extra big government rules.
Russia support NN rules so big federal gov monopoly can keep control over US. US POTS network stay under federal NN rule for generations.
NN keeps the network slow for everyone equally and the NN approved cell phone voice quality stay extra robotic.
One approved politically connected telco company supports their federally approved NN network. No community broadband competition ever.
Think about the removing of complex federal NN rules.
Russian support removing complex NN rules so only wealthy parts of US get good new broadband. Further divided USA as only wealthy can pay to get new telco investment as NN rules are removed.
With protective NN removed poor areas miss out on education and computer related skills.
Wealthy gated communities offer new non NN networks that grant access to the amazing new educational software.
Russian created deep educational gap in USA by inducing removing of protective federal NN rules.
The very best US think tank talking point would be that:
Russian artists make top quality memes that support both NN and no NN at same time so USA sink quicker further in domestic partisan political debate.
"Russia" anything is publication magic for US think tanks and political NGO's.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The Russians don't back Trump, and never did. All they're trying to is stir up hate and discontent, which is exactly what you're helping to do.
Comrade.
Didn't happen and won't happen. Mueller has nothing; otherwise, he would bring something other than process crime charges.
Yeah, right... we all know how that works
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
s/process crime charges/fraud/
There, ftfy.
I never knew there was a debate and I understand the difference to a discussion. So the real news here was that there was a debate.
No, he just said: i do it. He never listend to anybody and showed the world that in the US you can buy anything and anybody.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The internet was created under defacto net neutrality. It was only after the 2005 Brand X lawsuit that net neutrality was killed. Scalia, of all people, thought the ruling in Brand X was bad law.
So anytime anyone asks if NN was a good thing, the answer is FUCK YES, without NN the Internet would not exist, it would have just been a bunch of walled gardens AOL style.
They both want unlimited power.
Why is Snark Required?
How dare the peasants speak up for themselves. They must not have, so it must be the big bad boogey man, Russia in the closet that did it. We have the peasants sufficiently cowed to do anything as brave as speak up for their freedoms. *Trying to false flag the people's will doesn't legitimize it or make it any more right.*
Nothing to see here, move along please.
Or perhaps the comments weren't "meddling" but rather were Russians in the Tech sector who actually supported the concept of Net Neutrality and commented even though they are not US Citizens. And while the FCC implementation was not perfect, as the latest iteration of neutrality rules they'd been trying to implement since the early 00's, it was far better than the nothing we have now.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Most of you here on Slashdot are supporting a side Russia is strongly supporting. Doesn't that tell you anything about how wrong it is to support Net Neutrality as the FCC had it?
You believe Pai's comments on this? lol. You are a stupid cunt, mate.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Why do people get trolled by this mediocre crapflooder?
I'm stealing your bait, and snagging your hook in that sunken log over there.
Have fun.
Can't you be more vulgar and scatological? You're not pulling your weight, bro.
Trump is about to face charges for ... (snip)
Assuming you are talking about Trump Sr, you do realize that this is totally wrong. You CANNOT charge a sitting president with ANYTHING. DOJ regulations forbid this.
So... If Trump Sr is about to face charges, real ones, he's going to either need to be impeached and convicted or resign office first. I don't think either of these situations is remotely possible, both politically and by Trump's personality traits. The Republicans in the Senate won't vote to convict Trump in sufficient numbers to get a conviction and Trump doesn't seem likely to resign, even under such pressure.
Maybe, if he loses in 2020, you can charge him at 12:01 PM on January 20, 2021, or should he win reelection you will be waiting until January 20, 2025.
So no, Trump isn't "about to face charges" (real criminal charges that is) regardless of what you believe he did. By law Mueller simply cannot bring criminal charges on a sitting president. Even if he did, the charges would be quashed by the courts, or at the very least, deferred until Trump left office. There would be no arrest, no perp walk nothing. And Mueller would be rightly chastised for doing it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The Russians don't back Trump, and never did. All they're trying to is stir up hate and discontent, which is exactly what you're helping to do.
Comrade.
Which is EXACTLY what Rosenstine's statement when he announced Mueller charging the Russian companies way back when actually SAID and if you read the charges what the Russians where accused of actually doing.
The whole Russian effort here was to undermine the American citizen's faith in their elections and foster division among us. Why? Because a divided America is weaker and less of a threat to Russia and it's interests.
Putin's meager investment has paid off. He hit the jackpot with Trump's election and the Democrat's scorched earth tactics in reaction to it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
And it would have worked too, if it weren't for you meddling Russians!
The US house of representatives certainly can investigate and bring charges of (snip) on a sitting president for the purposes of impeachment, the constitution says so.
Impeachment charges are NOT criminal charges. But you already knew that. Impeachment is by it's very nature a political action and has nothing but a passing relationship to criminal charges.
But tis telling that you don't argue my assertion that there is exactly zero chance of a conviction in the Senate should the house actually make the stupid mistake and impeach.
To paraphrase Dirty Harry "Go ahead punk, make my day, impeach!" It worked out so horribly well for the Republicans when they tried it during Clinton's second term, and they had him dead to rights for lying under oath.... Especially given that in this case, it's arguable that there is pretty much nothing but rumor and the vague implication that some a non-specific crime was committed by the target of your scorn. Crimes, I might add, are utterly impossible to commit because they don't exist in law (collusion) or are so specific in law that they'd be impossible to hide the proof (treason) and involve activities which are nearly impossible to obscure.
IF it went badly for Republicans trying this with Clinton, what do you suppose will happen to Democrats? PLEASE try it, pretty please....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
as we've seen from republican control of the House, investigation and charges against the sitting president don't have to have any basis in law and can be completely political in nature. According to the recent republican examples of investigation, the standard of investigation and allegation seems to be anything that benefits my party.
Oh sure... They can do that.
The House can even impeach the president because they don't like how he ties his shoes if they like.
Impeachment is not a legal process, it's a political one and for the next two years, nay the next two election cycles at a minimum, there is nearly zero chance for an actual conviction in the Senate for Trump. Nobody votes to convict a president from their party, at least they haven't in recent history and who here thinks an impeachment will induce Trump to resign? No, he's in office for the duration. IF the Democrats impeach the duration likely becomes until January 20, 2025 because Trump will go into instant campaign mode and start ripping apart any Democrat who's head rises above the fray like he destroyed Jeb and Cruz. If you are a 2020 hopeful, you DON'T want to give Trump 2 years of running you though the media shredder and the Democrats would be well advised to not let Trump pick his opponent by doing this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Assuming you are talking about Trump Sr, you do realize that this is totally wrong. You CANNOT charge a sitting president with ANYTHING. DOJ regulations forbid this.
Maybe, but the state attorneys general are fully within their rights to charge a sitting president, if such crimes were committed within their jurisdictions. The question of presidential immunity is still hotly debated, but only for crimes committed while IN office. Not those committed before taking the oath.
Additionally, the congress has the power to indict all on it's own, and while I don't hold much hope that the repubs will do the right thing if credible allegations come out, there are a fair number of them that would love to see him out of office, and might pressure him to resign anyway, threatening impeachment.
So out of 22 million public comments, 500,000 came from "Russian" email addresses. Seriously? How the fuck is this news.
One approved politically connected telco company supports their federally approved NN network. No community broadband competition ever.
Why?
Net Neutrality has nothing to do with community broadband. Community broadband is forbidden by laws passed in several states. Not the FCC.
unless we stop voting for folks who take corporate money we're only delaying the inevitable. Heck, we're probably not really delaying it. The companies can flaunt a rule they know is on the way out the door since they can expect no enforcement.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Faggot? Is that supposed to be an insult?
Leftists are so hypocritical.
Charge away... As I recall, Clinton very nearly escaped having to participate in discovery in a civil suit and very clearly was going to be able to defer action on a civil suit. A criminal charge of a president is even MORE likely to be legally squashed. Even when they had WJC dead to rights on perjury, the criminal action on the charge had to wait until he left office. Trump will be no different.
Also, The Federal courts are likely to table any actual charges from any state or locality while the president is in office. The legal principle is pretty clear, the Federal Courts often override individual state court decisions and if this one hits the Supreme Court, they will, at a minimum, squash the charges until he leaves office. In short, you will have to Impeach him or wait.
Also, if you want to light a fire under the opposition for very little actual gain, PLEASE have some stupid state or locality file charges. It will be tied up in the courts longer than Trump will stay in office and pretty much guarantee he is re-elected in 2020 (which is a near historical certainty even now.)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Pai's highly questionable claim, and yours, tell me that opponents of net neutrality are so desperate that they're going to the same "Russia did it!" nonsense that Clintonists adopted when they lost.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This isn't a troll.. well it might have started as one the headline is trollish but there is a legitimate point in there. As it stood we had a policy that declared the absence of net neutrality to be net neutrality. This is no different than the law that was supposed to reign in the already illegal warrantless activity of the NSA that instead gave it legitimacy.
He is hardly the first or the only one but the later Obama years were particularly egregious in this kind of behavior where the public would be upset about something and he'd support legislation with a title and spin as if it resolved the issue when the actual content reinforced and legitimized the thing people didn't want.
The "net neutrality" the FCC had before basically legalized anything the ISPs wanted to do, no matter how not neutral it was, as long as they buried in somewhere in fine print. That isn't net neutrality. Not that Ajit Pai has any interest in actual net neutrality, but what we had wasn't net neutrality just a smokescreen that legalized the opposite.
Politicians with actual principles?
I'm sorry to say that BOTH sides of the isle have their issues with ethics and morals but there is a reason for this. It's a sad fact that you pretty much MUST lie, or at the very least be misleading, to get elected. With the country deeply divided and entrenched in their political perspectives, lying is the only thing that makes you electable. Well, it's one WAY to get elected I suppose, the easy way...
Politicians who are skilled in the art of getting elected are skilled at reading the crowd and have a set of phrases that when you parse are meaningless but are focus group tested to make you THINK you heard what you want to hear (regardless of your position on the issue being discussed) or at the vary least the undecided don't here what they DON'T what to hear on the issue. It's not about how the candidate actually would vote on the question, but how they can attract the most folks by saying stuff that sounds good but not committing to a position.
This was VERY true for the Beto v Cruz Senate race, at least for Beto. Beto had some pretty slick campaigning and tightly controlled stump speeches that where chuck full of these political speak sayings. He ran a very misleading campaign, trying to run in the middle, but when questioned off the cuff or hard pressed during a debate the "truth" often slipped out that blew the mystique behind his misleading focus group tested façade. Cruz isn't the media darling that Beto was, so such slips got largely unreported, but I saw them happen when coverage was live and unfiltered.
By the way, just so you understand, this is EXACTLY why Trump won over Clinton. Trump isn't a skilled focus group tested speaker with political experience in blowing pleasant smelling smoke at the undecided. He's a brash plain talker who says what he's thinking, right or wrong, out loud for all to hear (Or read should you follow him on Twitter.) Some folks are tired of being lied to, or being mislead by less than upfront politicians who speak in riddles or use platitudes that don't parse to actual positions unless you want them to. Clinton was (among other things) seen as too sleazy, having flip flopped too many times on some major policy questions to be trusted to DO what she claimed. Also, IF Trump is reelected, it will be because he actually tried to DO what he campaigned on and although his mouth has not always voiced the truth, he's truly trying to fulfill his promises, in as far as he's able.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Most of you here on Slashdot are supporting a side Russia is strongly supporting. Doesn't that tell you anything about how wrong it is to support Net Neutrality as the FCC had it?
Here let me explain why that's getting you flagged Troll here. Your argument lacks any amount of depth outside of of "hey let me scare you and back that up with nothing". But wait there's more to your comment here...
but you have all been lied to if you think the 30 page monstrosity the FCC originally had was anything like what you want
Again, let me make a statement that has nothing in the sense of actual substance. Really? Can you please cite any single page thereof that you'd like to argue? Making statements like "your ideas suck because bad guy likes them" is pretty much akin to getting into a real debate and then just tossing out "yo mama".
We are all better off being rid of it, being rid of something that Russia fully backed because they knew how it would screw up our internet in the long run
This shouldn't surprise you when the obvious question that comes from that statement is "why?". And the reason why? Oh it's that boogeyman argument again. Perhaps you should try an argument with more meat and potatoes instead of "thoughts and prayers"?
Now on to the point here. The FCC created a set of rules to abide by and the ISPs continually filed suit, really fucking long story short, these cases basically said you need the authority to enforce those rules and considering everything you have currently, Title II is it. What really needed to happen was Congress pass legislation that allowed additional enforcement authority, BUT SURPRISE Congress did nothing. So considering that Congress was content with sitting on its fat ass and doing nothing, the FCC went ahead with Title II and then moved to enforce their rules on NN. ISPs got butt hurt and began to earworm their way into the FCC's chairman to remove Title II change things so that FTC would handle the matters (which they won't since there's a long legal story there as to why they're not really going to be able to stand well in court should they challenge NN conventions in court and gosh ISPs know that), and the FCC would mostly stick to a purely service level enforcement (you have Internet or you don't but how well that Internet functions is no longer their beef).
Blah, blah, blah. This whole thing is longer than I really care to reiterate, we have an Internet go read for yourself. But point being Congress needs to step up, they aren't go to (surprised - no one), we're fucked, the end. This, "Oh look Russia supports it, so that should blah blah blah" is a stupid comment, but considering the source of the comment, no one on this site is surprised.
You should stick to global warming/climate change arguments, you put more effort into those. This feels like a McDonald's level of gratification for trolly comments you put out. Yeah, I get to laugh at how dense the comment is, but I feel so empty since it's such a cheaply put together argument. And "No" I don't really care to (big air quotes here)debate(/big air quotes here) NN with you in particular, because honestly it means nothing and you sure as shit aren't changing your mind about anything any time this century. So why even begin? I write my Congressional rep all the time about it, I write my shitlord Senators about it (once per month), and ultimately that's about all I can do short of breaking out pitchforks and torches, which in turn I'm saving for topics that I care a lot more about than NN. But just in case you were wondering why you were getting modded troll, which I'm pretty sure, you are not, but in the off chance you were, there you go. ;-) Cheers!
Because it would never be the US ISPs spamming the FCC with fake emails from spoofed internet addresses. Yep, never could happen. They are as clean as the newly driven snow.
|
Or is that the newly plowed slush?
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
So, you insist on moving the goal posts AGAIN? First it was collusion, now it's something more? come on...
What was Mueller supposed to be investigating? As I recall (and just goggled) Mueller is tasked with investigating any relationships between Russians and the Trump campaign (and any crimes uncovered during the investigation). So what is this new crime you speak of?
Your "conspiracy to defraud the American people" means exactly what in this context? And which law are you thinking is involved? When did it happen and who did it?
By the way, your complaint about the president not testifying under oath is premature. First, there is a lot of precedent that says the president cannot be forced to personally testify in any legal proceeding. He can do it willingly, but it's doubtful you can force it. And the "perjury" trap argument is a valid reason to not agree to answer questions under oath in person, most lawyers would agree it's a dangerous thing to do. I lived though the Clinton thing, I remember all this getting debated but unresolved way back then.
Also, the president HAS provided any requested documentation or materials and HAS provided written answers to Mueller's questions, the latter willingly. He could have chosen to fight having to give answers and tied this up for months as the legal question of forcing a sitting president to testify under oath is far from settled law. However, he has cooperated with Mueller's investigation and provided written answers, I believe before Thanksgiving.
This Mueller thing is about over and it's very possible he found NOTHING of import that implicates Trump in any illegal activity. I don't know, but I'm curious what you are going to do if that's what Mueller reports? Invent some new crime to investigate? Move the goal posts more? Scream at the sky? What?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Russian e-mail address is poor evidence, it is so easy to sign up at big mail services either in rRussia or in US.