How A Lobbying Firm May Have Submitted Fake FCC Comments (gizmodo.com)

Remember when dozens of Americans said their names were used for fake comments sent to America's FCC opposing net neutrality?

Now Gizmodo's taken a hard look at their past interviews with Dan Germain, the CTO of a company that helps lobbyists construct digital "grassroots" campaigns -- and at the conservative nonprofit Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF). Attempting to confirm or disprove the alleged link between CQ and CFIF, Gizmodo initiated its own review of the API data logs last week, focusing on comments from dozens of people who claim they were impersonated online.... [T]imestamps contained in the API logs reveal an unmistakable correlation between the use of CQ's API key and numerous identical comments containing CFIF's text... By comparing the API logs to comment data that the FCC had already made publicly available, Gizmodo found more than a dozen comments containing CFIF's boilerplate language... In each successful case, the comments were received by the FCC while CQ's API key was in use, with the logs reflecting deviations in the timestamps roughly equivalent to the blink of an eye...

Prior to CQ becoming a subject of interest in an ongoing criminal investigation, Germain explained at length that his company had created a platform specifically to direct comments to the FCC and that it had been operational since at least 2016.... Whereas many of the groups responsible for uploading millions of comments requested only one or two API keys, logs show that CQ, over a period of several months, requested no fewer than 114.
The article notes that identical comments using language from CFIF "are now suspected of having been uploaded using CQ's software" -- and that they were submitted to the FCC "several hundred thousand times."

Comments

Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[rsilvergun]

I can trot out my usual question: is this gonna change how anyone votes? Seriously, is it? /. is an older audience, so statistically there's some folks who got behind the current administration who's both responsible for these policies and actively looking the other way. And /. is a fairly well educated bunch, so we also know that our voting choices got us here.

So once again, is this gonna change how anyone vote? I haven't gotten a single "Yeah" to day....

Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote for politicians who believe in NN. It's all we can do. That and try to share our concerns with our political neighbors hoping they see the light.

You can show a horse water, you can't make them drink it.

Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

So many scandals from this administration and still blin support from Fox news and Republicans during the Cohen hearings. Don't think this one will change a trump loyalist mind

Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[HiThere]

How can you tell? Most (relatively honest) evaluation sites find most even mildly controversial statements by any politician of any stripe are lies. Some, admittedly, more blatant and unashamed than others.

Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html - A list from even way back in 2017 has enough lies to choke a treasonous GOP camel.

Nobody lies like the Dunnald. Nobody ever. I would like to see a tally of all his statements ranked objectively true, objectively false, and undeterminable. I'd wager heavily he's deep in the red, just like his business history.

Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

This political fact checker agrees that all politicians lie at least some of the time, but that a small number of politicians still tell the truth most of the time.

Do you have a survey in mind that found that "most even mildly controversial statements by any politician of any stripe are lies"?

Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[subie]

I'm a Democrat and I'm tired the whole anti Trump crap. The election is over and done with. Nothing you are claiming will change anyone's mind. Most have the folks that screamed Trump is a racists, Nazi, etc haven't hurt him. Instead they have made those terms useless, no one fears being called a racist anymore and the stupid usage of Nazi was a joke from the beginning. There was no way I was voting for Hillary, I simply don't trust her and the crap that was pulled on Sanders strengthen my view. We are either going to have to come up with a real presidential candidate or trump will win again. There isn't a single candidate right now that can take on Trump. Sorry to be rude but get a new hobby already.

Re:Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that keep in mind Gizmondo thought the piss dosser was an amazing bit o journalism.

They are only slightly better than national enquirer. But more like 'star'. Littered with rumor and innuendo.

At this point with 'news' consider the source and what their agenda is. Then tune into whatever floats your boat. Because you sure are not looking to change your opinion but to stroke your ego and make sure you 'made the right choice'. We do that all the time. We make decisions then spend a LONG time justifying it. Your brain will even spend a long time making sure it protects itself. Once you realize that you can understand why others have differing opinions. But it sure will not change them.

Re:Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody gives a shit.
And "Net Neutrality" is dead, even though it was only called that, it was really the opposite, in that it disallowed real competition that led to the elimination of thousands of ISP's in favor of the big companies like Charter and Comcast.
Now anyone can start their own ISP with minimal regulation. Competition is wonderful!

Re:Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

... is this gonna change how anyone votes?

Why change their votes? Are Americans going to vote against class-warfare policies, for 'the ugly truth' proclaimers, against 'patriots' (closet psychopaths), military officers and long-term district attorneys (bombs and prisons aren't available in politics), against 'look, socialist' alarm-ism, against 'don't vote for that arsehole' defamation?

Nixon, himself a moderate, forced the leftists out of the Republican party, opening the way for Reagan and bat-shit crazy policies. The Democrat party followed by aligning with corporate interests (See both Clintons). For the last 35 years, US government has been owned by the wealthy: They don't care about poverty and suffering. Worse, the people themselves don't vote for honesty and diversity.

This is why Sanders will lose again. His age is a big negative but the real issue is his inability to control the dialogue: To be easily bullied into confessing that politicians don't control the country. News reporters are careful, of course, to not ask who controls the government but instead colour honesty as incompetence.

Re:Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

And /. is a fairly well educated bunch, so we also know that our voting choices got us here.

That has to be the single most hilariously stupid comment I have read on slashdot ever!

Re:Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Type44Q]

And /. is a fairly well educated bunch, so we also know that our voting choices got us here.

Can't argue with there... but if we were intelligent and logical (there are too many who are merely "educated" and nothing more), we might know that the voting decisions of the masses are 'well-contained' by our two-faced, one-party system . Vive La Difference... only there really isn't one.

Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[HiThere]

No. Merely personal observation and history. And a few responses from writing to a legislator. So I guess I should have said, "In my experience most controversial statements by any politican are lies", as that was more precisely what I meant.

That said, are you really sure you want to trust the New York times on this matter? They *might* be honest. They *might* have checked things in a even-handed way. But they sure don't always do so.

All that said, I'll generally vote for someone who promotes statements that I think desirable rather than someone who does the opposite, even if I judge the second to be more honest.

Re:Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

Caring about net neutrality was something I did before I realized the real threat to internet freedom was the collection of "not evil" companies like Google that will use every tool at this disposal to force everyone else to follow their definition of "not evil" as well. I still support NN, but it simply isn't important anymore.

Further, if anyone thinks any of these FCC comments made a difference or ever could make a difference, no matter what they said, I have a bridge to sell you.

Re:Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to change anything, however, this is criminal behavior and the people responsible need to go to prison and forfeit all of the profit they gained and then some.

And what will happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's their punishment? What crimes did they commit? Will there be charges? Is this the first time this has happened? Or the first time you caught it?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Re:And what will happen?

[omnichad]

Identity theft and possibly slander (admittedly a tort and not a crime). Slander because someone's reputation is at stake if they were perceived to be stopping something that they wouldn't be caught dead supporting. Nobody is going to pay for this or even face a minor wrist slap. But at least the truth could finally be out and maybe prevent further disinformation.

Ajit Pai, a dishonest cunt? Must be some mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course this is fake news, we all know Donald Trump's administration goes to great lengths to avoid any fakery. Sure I'm sure!

Thanks,

[rsilvergun]

it's good to at least get some kind of answer (I usually don't when I ask this question).

You vote for the ones that say they do

[rsilvergun]

and then you show up to the primary election and primary their asses if they're lying.

Also, we need to get a majority in favor of NN. Right now some of the wishy-washy guys and gals can safely say they support it _and_ vote for it while lying through their teeth because the current Congress (the Senate in particular) opposes NN as a burdensome regulation. You see this a lot with Susan Collins where she takes populist stances when it's safe and falls in line behind Mitch McConnel (the defacto head of the party and a right 'ole bastard if there ever was one) when it's time.

Re:You vote for the ones that say they do

[alvinrod]

Most people don't care about net neutrality if they even know what it is. You're not going to get anyone to seriously consider selecting candidates on that basis as long as issues such as the economy, gun control, immigration, healthcare, taxes, abortion, and a whole list of others are around.

Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

No surprise, from the most corrupt bunch since at least the 1860s. Only three people on the planet think net neutrality isn't a good thing. They're just very loud.

Re:Ajit Pai, a dishonest cunt? Must be some mistak

[Anonymous Coward]

Just shut the fuck up, asshole. You are living in the past. Get on board the train now or get left behind.

It may not change many people's votes...

[93 Escort Wagon]

But it's still good to get a record of the shenanigans out in the open, if only to force the cheaters to do more work to find a different approach next time.

And who knows, it just may give some voters pause, come 2020. For a somewhat similar example on the other side: I know that news of Elizabeth Warren's various shenanigans regarding her heritage have largely soured me on her candidacy for president in 2020. If, miraculously, some reasonably honest middle-of-the-road Republican ended up being the presidential candidate and was facing Warren, there's a decent chance I'd vote for him/her.

Re:It may not change many people's votes...

[rtb61]

What this really does is point out Lobbyists, PR Agencies, Marketers are everywhere, bullshit in evry forum. By far the majority of fanbois who attack negative reviews of any kind, paid trolls with hundreds of accounts out of those firms. Any time people start defending crap out of corporations, they are paid and that one person ain't one person but a person pretending to be hundreds of people online. When the corporate defence sounds like bullshit, that is because it is bullshit, end to end bullshit.

Google know exactly the Lobbyists, PR Agencies, Marketers bullshit that is going on, they have the details and the mining ability, their piece of shit response silence individuals and let the corporate cunts do what they want, they are buying ads (googlites you should be deeply ashamed of the corporation you quisling for). Google attacks those who oppose this crap and support those that do it, as long as they buy ads, slimey pieces of shite all round.

Remeber all that nothing data coming out of those piece of shit firms, Google, Twitter and Facebook, so did they analyse the bullshit coming out of US corporations to see who was really trying to tank the election, of course but those cunts hid that.

Re:It may not change many people's votes...

[kqs]

I do like shenanigans out in the open. It doesn't stop them but at least a few voters will admit the truth when it smacks them in the face,

But I'm a bit confused about your Warren comment. As far as I know, the sequence is: she believed that she had a native american ancestor some generations ago. She put this down on a staff information form. She never got any benefit from this. When she was challenged on it, she took a DNA test and found that she had a native american ancestor some generations ago. What am I missing?

Also, the last middle-of-the-road republican candidate was Obama.

2 line Perl + LWP::Simple script.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I haven't looked at the FCC website, but almost all data entry stuff like this can be handled in a few lines of perl.

Automation is very powerful to do harm to democracies.
* phone dialers
* troll-bots
* far-left democrats
* far-right republicans
* and self-selected online polls,

Just to name a few.

First contender for Straw Man of 2019 Award

[tooyoung]

I can trot out my usual question: is this gonna change how anyone votes? Seriously, is it?

I'm relieved that you trotted it out. With many of us having a financial incentive to create a political divide on what has historically been more of a technical issue, it's heartening to know that we have such a reliable trope. "Is ____ opinion on ____ going to change how anyone votes?" is flexible enough that we can use it on a range of issues. Net neutrality, race, equality, climate change, livable wage... it doesn't even matter what side of the divide you're paid to push. Just invoke that question and you can dismiss the entire subject for enough of the readers to turn the tide.

Probably not, but is that a bad thing?

[Picodon]

I can trot out my usual question: is this gonna change how anyone votes? Seriously, is it?

It depends what you mean by “changing how people vote”. If you meant “abruptly switching to the other side”, then the answer is likely negative. After all, suppose that you’d just read the opposite news: some questionable company helped manipulate things, hoping to make your side win. Would you automatically change your vote in favour of the opposite side? I wouldn’t.

Sure, such affair would leave a foul taste in my mouth and I’d want things to improve. Yes, if my elected officials were directly implicated, I’d certainly consider possible (and sensible) alternatives with the same general alignment (but alternatives are often scarce or inexistent), while retaining some amount of pragmatism. Setting aside the mindset of radical one-issue voters, there are many concerns to simultaneously consider, and compromises to be made, when casting a vote. So, I don’t find it shocking that the answer to your question is, in all likelihood, “no”.

That being said, as long as it is covered in the media and talked about, this kind of abuse can have some small but lasting and compounding impact. Of course, one can dream that citizens would forcefully communicate their disapprobation to their elected representative, in an attempt to stimulate positive change (such as passing laws instituting penalties for such corrupt practice, and ensuring that those laws are properly enforced). But even in a fairly passive society, after abuses have occurred repeatedly, popular indignation will indeed begin to influence poll results.

Unfortunately, mounting exasperation can lead to people haphazardly jumping from one extreme to another (or even abandoning moderation to embrace an extreme), and that has rarely been a good thing. As recent (and no-so-recent) history has all too well illustrated in a number of countries, years of unbridled corruption can drive despairing people to enthusiastically vote for the worst demagogic scumbag who’s promised to “clean house” by any means.

In short, I prefer to hope that this type of news does not directly change the way people vote, but that it helps shape people’s perception and change the way people talk about political issues and about the process by which political decisions are made. And I do hope that we get laws and enforcement that puts perpetrators of such stunt (as well as their complicit beneficiaries) behind bars for a dissuasive length of time.

Undermining Democracy

[bussdriver]

Attacking representative democracy's ability to function should be a treason class crime. Tampering with elections being obvious, but feedback systems for regulatory boards are also representatives and should also be included.

Re:Undermining Democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

You and what army will take care of this? :)

blah blah blah blah, go away you boring nerd nobody listens to you anyway, blah blah blah blah ...

murica!

Hint: if you want things to change you need to put in a large bribe i mean contribution for law makers. See how this will change things? Good luck suckers, its only to get more sucky. Get used to your shithole until you drop dead from too much shit.

THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks...

[bobbied]

Ah come on folks, everybody knows that the comment process used by the FCC isn't some vote counter. It's for providing unique information to the FCC about the topic. The public can comment, but in reality these comments mean little or nothing and are rarely even reviewed.

When you submit some "form letter" kind of comment, they may notice that somebody else was interested enough to post a form letter, but if you think some poor hapless bureaucrat in DC actually READS all these, you are sadly mistaken.

So who cares if somebody tried to stuff the public comment system? It literally was a waste of their time and the FCC's resources and it's even worse for Slashdot to be discussing it.... AGAIN and AGAIN....

Net Neutrality is DEAD and isn't happening in this congress. It's not making it though the Senate and certainly won't be signed into law by the president. Besides, nothing bad has happened so far without it, so chill, take a deep breath and keep waiting for a better time....

Everything is politics

[rsilvergun]

And politics is money. It's naive to suggest otherwise.

This is an issue that should be critical to anyone in tech. I know defense contractor guys who don't vote for Democrats because they're almost guaranteed to cut funding to the companies they work for. This is like that.

If you're in IT practically everything you do depends on NN in one form or another. Like it or not most if not all of us are where we are today because of a free and open internet, which can't survive w/o NN.

My point is that an issue that should be near and dear to the heart of the core audience here, something that should be a deal breaker, doesn't seem to be. I was hoping to hear why from some of the crowd. It's probably too much to hope for "Yeah, I came to my senses and will demand my immediate best interests get served by the people I vote for"...

That's not gonna be true

[rsilvergun]

about anyone reading these comments.

The odds of somebody who doesn't give a rat's behind about NN coming to /. and then clicking a story about NN and then, after all that reading the comments is somewhere between successfully navigating an asteroid field and chuckling at that reference.

Re: That's not gonna be true

[Cmdln Daco]

They were talking about the voting public in general. Not a bunch of ingrown slashbots like yourself.

Re: That's not gonna be true

[Anonymous Coward]

The conservative monkey pokes his head out again.

Re:THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks...

[Tough Love]

Net neutrality is under attack by unethical conservatives, it is not dead. Are you an unethical conservative or just a surrender monkey?

Re:THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice. So don't worry when I use your identity to submit a comment that Hitler was great and everyone should put anchovies on pizza.

Your're fine with that right? Good. Nothing unethical with pretending to be you to spout bullshit.

Re: Seriously "subie" you are one dumb faggot lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for being outraged, American dogs! Fight among yourselves!

Yours Sincerely,

Comrade Major Lifeng Wang
Information Operations Directorate
Ministry of State Security
14 East Chang'an Street
Dongcheng Qu
Beijing
People's Republic of China

Re: THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks...

[Cmdln Daco]

Are you a partisan hack or just a troll?

Re: Seriously "subie" you are one dumb faggot lol.

[subie]

" Go fuck yourself traitor, lol. " I'm married with 5 kids plus I'm a foster parent so I'm betting it's you that needs to self pleasure. I have no such issues. "Trump is a criminal many, many times over and he lied to everyone's face the entire time." Show me the factual evidence, provide copies of his criminal records. And fake websites don't count. "Trump isn't eligible to run again after the Mueller report. You don't know shit about this obviously." Unless Trump is convicted of serious crimes, he will be running in 2020. Furthermore, unless my party gets its act together and finds a serious candidate Trump will win a second term. If there were any real issues against the President we would have heard it by now but you knew that already. "no one fears being called a racist anymore and the stupid usage of Nazi was a joke from the beginning." - Nazi faggot detected. " Thanks for proving my point. "You will hang also, traitor. " You are welcome to come and try sir. But like the rest of your life, you'll fail at that too Mr. Keyboard tough guy.

Re: THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are a conservative monkey. Glad YOU admitted it.

Re:THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks...

[bobbied]

If you are pushing this on the FCC's public comment system, knock yourself out. Literally NOTHING you can say will matter and the more you repeat yourself, even if you use alternative ID's the less it actually will matter.

The public comment system is designed to get information from the public, so if your repeated posting doesn't contain some kind of new or novel information of use to the FCC's regulatory decisions, you are wasting your time. Nobody at the FCC is reading automated posts and form letters beyond *maybe* the first one. After the first duplicate, they get added to the automated SPAM filters and they are just taking up storage space on their way to the /dev/null bit-bucket.