On the other hand, it's difficult for phone in pocket to ask for confirmation,
No, not really. A simple pop-up asking "are you sure" would deal with a lot of butt dialing. Why do you think it would be difficult for the phone to do that? I get confirmations on a lot of things, like deleting SMSs, etc.
whereas Alexa can do it, and should do it.
And we don't know that it didn't. There's so little detail in the fine article, we don't know what happened. It's fun to make stuff up, less fun to admit we have no idea what actually happened.
If you have access to voice phone, you probably have access to Internet.
You have idea who I am or what I have access to "probably", but you'll happily tell me how much better my life would be if I would only do things your way. Please stop. I accept that you see no need for anything other than two sticks to rub together to make fire and a piece of string to catch fish. I'm happy you are happy with your life that way. Allow others to have their own lives, ok?
One might argue that it was inevitable that this would happen to someone eventually.
One might argue that not only is it inevitable, but that essentially the same thing has already happened to so many people that there is a name for it: butt dialing. Phone in pocket misinterprets "commands" and dials someone on your contact list or redials the last person you called, and then happily transmits the audio of everything it can hear to them.
This could also be done peer-to-peer, with your phone talking to a smart home controller in your home directly.
If you mean "using a web page interface", well, d'oh. That would require having access to the internet where I am. It also involves a middle-man or three. With Alexa, all I need to do is "phone home" and tell it what to do with something I have everywhere I go -- my voice.
As far as hitting a light switch, what's wrong with simply turning off the lights when you leave home, or even flipping a few breakers (anything but fridge and HVAC) if you go on vacay?
There is nothing wrong with turning lights off when I leave if I want them to be off for the entire time I am away. Flipping a breaker is really overkill and likewise un-fixable remotely when I decide I need to turn something on. With Alexa and the skill that talks to the local web server, I can do a huge number of things remotely. Whatever I can program I can do. Lights, radio, fan, send an email, reboot a computer, etc.
I understand that YOU see no need for this. That's fine. But YOU are not everyone else. Your disdain for the product as "useless" isn't binding on anyone else, and all the comments here of that kind are just noise. It's nice you don't like the product. Don't use it. Problem solved. Ninety-nine percent of the modern economy deals with things that are convenient, and this is just another example of that.
I don't have an Alexa so perhaps you could explain. It has a function where you can record a conversation then send the recorded conversation to a contact?
I believe they are currently advertising the ability to tell your device to do something like "call home" (Gramma gets a device, maybe it's Google's, dunno, card says "say call home" and she gets the kiddies.) For all we know from TFA, this is a case of Alexa hearing "Alexa... call Frank... " or whoever it was, and they recorded the message on Frank's voicemail.
Consider what is required to make this "rare" incident possible:
- Alexa must continually record audio, and upload these recordings.
Wrong. All it requires is someone saying something that sounds like "Alexa" and the recording turns on. It doesn't have to be "continually".
- Alexa has access to your contacts list.
Yes. It will, if you've given it access.
- Alexa is able to send email, including attachments.
It probably can, but in this instance it was something sent to a phone. TFA is so devoid of technical details, and it is third party info, so it is entirely possible that the "audio files" that were "sent to a phone" are voicemail messages. Like butt-dialing but using Alexa.
How many people have any idea that Alexa has these capabilities?
Out of the group of people that have connected their contact list with Alexa so it can send messages to people on that list, probably ALL OF THEM.
Ok, ok, most people wouldn't care if they did know. I'll go cry in a corner now.
You really shouldn't allow other people so much control over your emotional state. Why do you care so much that some people value the convenience of an Alexa over the strict "tell nobody nothing" privacy restrictions you put on yourself?
I understand that this stuff it convenient to have, but like how hard it is to hit a damn light switch.
If I'm not home, really hard.
As a proof of concept I configured a "skill" so it could talk to a web server on my local network. All I did was connect it to one of my X10 lights, but it worked. With that framework I can have it do anything that can be programmed. That's more than "hit a damn light switch".
But your question points out the humor in a current ad. Woman turns on the lights, plays music, and then tries to start the washing machine. Oh no, her washing machine isn't controllable. Let's buy a new one, so she can start the laundry while she's standing next to the machine.
why on earth can't any of these assistance interpret commands locally 15 years later?
There is a big difference between a word recognition program like Dragon and a speech recognition and response system like Alexa.
Dragon worked great because, IIRC, you had to train it to your voice. All it did was convert speech to text. YOU had to speak the commands exactly the way the program you were controlling wanted them. If it got a word wrong, YOU had to correct it.
Alexa has to figure out the words AND what to do with them.
If you said to Dragon "tell me a Henny Youngman joke", it would type "tell me a Henny Youngman joke" into whatever program you were using. If you say that to Alexa, it has to try to figure out what a "Henny Youngman" is, what a joke is, that you want it to tell you something, and then tell you. (It can't -- it doesn't know what a "Henny Youngman" is. Or Steven Wright. Stoopid monkey.)
You can be very serious about privacy, but incompetent enough to not be able to do anything good about it.
Or you can be serious about privacy and design a complicated system that is intended to operate on voice commands that sometimes gets things wrong.
The Fine Article is so completely devoid of details as to be useless. There is not a single mention of why this happened. Did the owners say something that sounded like "Alexa", and something that sounded like "send this to Frank"? Or was it something else?
The Alexa I have consistently responded when it heard someone refer to Alexi Lalas on the TV. It also responded when the police scanner reported that a Lexus was being pulled over. This doesn't seem like an outrageous mistake to me. Did those people say something that was misinterpreted?
This is how bad the article is: it first says the recording was sent to a random person in Seattle, THEN it says it was someone on their contact list. Random, not random. Same sentence.
Maybe someday/. will start linking to technically relevant information in technical stories, instead of clickbait TV station pages.
The first part of the post is you claiming without evidence that this is a common practice, while every study on the matter has concluded the very opposite.
Anyone who lives anywhere near Chicago knows the truth, and Chicago isn't unique. The names change but the machine stays the same. You can trot out a thousand "studies" by groups that have no interest in fixing the system as proof that it doesn't happen; watching it happen proves otherwise.
Don't plead ignorance here. It's well known that these are methods to disenfranchise the living voters in the state.
Yeah, purging the roles of dead people is just a way to disenfranchise the living. No bias in THAT claim, is there?
As for dead voters, that's primarily a problem of voter rolls, and fixing voter roll problems also fixes the other actual form of meatbag fraud.
Yeah, if the system were perfect there would be no fraud. But it isn't, and claiming there is no fraud is just sticking your head in the sand. You might notice, the same people who claim there is no vote fraud are also the ones who don't want to fix the voter rolls. And when someone shows up who does want to fix the rolls, the ones who don't want them fixed cry "racism!". We haven't seen that in THIS discussion, have we?
I don't know what the "it" in that paragraph refers to.
The existing public comment system.
I agree that "interest groups" and "spokespeople" are allowed to comment in the existing system. However, the existing system doesn't satisfy the major points I put forward.
It allows anyone who wants to comment to do so. There is nothing disrespectful in the current system. The current rules do NOT say that the FCC has to respond to every comment. That's your major points 1 and 2. Since the FCC is not violating the rules, then your major point 3 is moot.
It's not very productive for you to to snip to just this one isolated clause in my proposal.
It's not very productive to just keep repeating claims that aren't true. It's also not very productive to ignore the issue that is the heart of this discussion: "identity theft" and the ability of people to use fake names when making public comments on FCC NPRM.
You keep talking about the FCC "attend[ing] to every comment" but they aren't required to do that. You want "more respect", but I can't figure out what "actionable hook" has been created regarding that or how to achieve your goal. There needs to be "a different system" that has "more respect", but you don't explain how a different system would solve the problem with this one: inability to validate identities of commenters. That's a problem for ANY system.
I "snipped" to that one part of your proposal because the implication was that the current system was flawed in this area. Why do we need a different, new system to allow spokespeople from "interest groups" to comment if you think the current system already allows that?
Do you have solid, actionable proposals for solving the issue with the current system or just repeated calls for a new system that does the same things the current one already does?
I firmly believe they shouldn't answer each and every comment, and they shouldn't be expected to.
Then what is the problem? They didn't do what you don't expect them to anyway. What is the "actionable hook" that we're creating by all of this? What do you mean by "attend to" that they didn't do, if you don't think they need to respond to every comment -- you did say it was their duty to "attend to every comment". If they don't need to attend to every comment, then what duty did they fail to perform?
I think however that they've knowingly chosen a submission-and-evidence-receiving mechanism (the comments website) which is doomed to be unworkable.
Except it has worked very well for many many other NPRM and regulatory issues. It gathered a lot of cruft for THIS ONE because of the heat and deliberate misrepresentation and politics of THIS ONE. There is no public comment system that would have done better, except one that was heavily censored and had strict identity validation mechanisms. I've yet to hear anyone suggest a validation method, yet it's the crux of "solving" this "problem".
The high volume of junk there doesn't absolve them of the duty to gather important and relevant submissions in some form or other.
They did that. The fact that there were a lot of junk comments doesn't negate all the valid ones they got.
I think they're pointing to junk comments and saying basically that they've fulfilled their duty via the website and there's nothing they can usefully do with the responses.
They fulfilled their duty to have a public comment, via the website and all the other mechanisms. They can point to the junk comments and honestly say that there is nothing they can usefully do with them because they are junk. We all admit that they are junk. What should they do with them otherwise?
The system did what it was supposed to do. The fact that some people tried to overwhelm it with crap doesn't change the basic system or the honest comments.
Then why bother trying to claim there are so many laws that prohibit it? If there is no reason to prosecute, who cares what laws you think exist (but don't actually prove.)
Avoid the question? Sure I haven't answered the question because -- as I've said explicitly -- I don't think it's important.
It is the critical question if you are going to keep harping about how the system isn't fulfilling the FCC requirements for accepting comments. The system accepts comments, so that can't be the broken part. It must be the part about identifying the commenter. How do you do that?
I'd design a very different feedback mechanism for the FCC.
It's not a FEEDBACK SYSTEM. It's not a vote. It's not a referendum. It's not a poll. It's not an opinion gatherer. It's a PUBLIC COMMENT system. What things do the FCC need to consider that they already haven't. It doesn't matter if 8 million people all say the same thing, it's ONE THING overall. It doesn't matter if one person says it, if it is relevant.
It'd start with interest groups with spokespeople,
"Interest groups" with "spokespeople" are allowed to comment in the existing system. You don't need to redesign anything.
I'm not talking about comments submitted to the website. I'm talking about what I've read of its public consultation process,
Which is the public comment process via the web or other media.
Donald Trump has maintained that his Twitter account is an official outlet, so to block accounts would violate the right to petition.
So, let's say I'm the mayor of a city. I get a phone installed in my office with an unpublished number that I use to make outgoing official calls. According to this argument, if someone starts distributing my unlisted number and thousands of people start calling that phone, so many that I cannot use it for anything, I can't tell the telephone company to block all incoming calls because I would be violating all of those people's right to "redress" or "petition", using that phone line? Because I use the phone to make official calls, I must allow any and all incoming calls, even though there are a hundred other phone lines for incoming calls available?
So if they are pursuing this, they are using their own "identity theft" as a means of forcing the issue into the light again so they can discuss the broader effect of millions of fake comments.
And what is the "broader effect" of millions of fake comments? Exactly what difference did they make in anything?
The only result is a tempest in a teapot over something that anyone who knew the process could have, and probably did, predict. Gee, hot-button issue combined with public record and easy comment submission resulted in floods of fake comments that everyone could examine for themselves. I'm shocked. It's never happened before. Ever. In the history of the world.
By using the term "identity theft" for this, these two Senators (who should know better) are diluting the term for the times when there is real identity theft.
And there is no law preventing anyone else from choosing to use that name for themselves, EXCEPT if they are doing it for the specific purpose of committing fraud in the legal sense.
E.g., if I use your name to try to get a credit card expecting you to get the bill, that's legal fraud. If I use your name to subscribe to the local newspaper blog without any reference to you at all, that is not fraud in the legal sense.
Yet somehow a comment was left with her name and her address supporting net neutrality repeal,
So what is the FCC supposed to do to prevent that from happening? Be angry at someone who lied in her name, and be angry at those on both sides that did it, but if you want to be angry at the FCC then explain what steps they should take to prevent that from happening. How do they validate the identity of the person who did that so they could have prevented it?
How do you explain that?
It's pretty obvious. Someone lied on a comment form.
The other reason is it's a basic part of democracy that the FCC should pay attention to what people think and should base its decisions on evidence;
The FCC public comment period is NOT A VOTE. It is NOT A DEMOCRACY. They read the comments and consider them for what they contain -- not who makes them. The public comments may or may not contain this "evidence" which you think is so critical. They are not, by themselves, evidence.
it enshrined part of this duty in its own rule-making process which requires it to attend to every comment.
You have some twisted definition of "attend to" if you think it means they have to answer each and every comment.
If it then says "we can't pay attention to the comments because there were too many of them and they were junk"
Saying that they found the 8 million junk comments unconvincing is "attend[ing] to" them with one sentence. They will, of course, not pay attention to the junk comments, in the sense that they will not change the outcome. Why would you expect them to? They're junk comments.
Because you want to prosecute people for lying to the government on an FCC public comment website. That means you must think there is some definition of "real name" that has to be used or else there is some crime committed. If you can't define it, then stop pretending it's a crime not to use one, Mr. ljw1004.
There's a statue in place.
Heh.
That's a strange question for you to be asking me.
You're the one who is unhappy that people are using fake names on an FCC website to make public comments where real names are irrelevant to start with. Who else would I ask about validating those names?
I see only these three questions at this stage: (1) do we have reason to believe that it's IMPOSSIBLE to gather feedback in a way that's compatible with the FCC's existing duties and rules?
Nobody is debating that. Of course it is not impossible, they are doing it all the time. I've participated in the process before, and I chose not to waste my time this time. Everything that I would have said was said by many other people, so my comment would not add new information.
The question you are avoiding is how they would possibly VALIDATE every name entered into the comment forms. Tell us all how you think that can be done. I'll wait while you think something up.
I think the important issue is numerous pieces of corroborating evidence which together paint picture of an FCC that willfully ignored all evidence that disagreed with its vision.
Oh, poppycock. You have no such evidence. You don't know what comments they did and did not consider fully, you only know that you see ALL of the public comments that are on the public record. Yes, you see ALL the comments on the public record because that's how the public record works.
I can't see what the point of the comments process was: The results were sure to be so full of fake submissions as to be completely meaningless, and it's pretty clear the FCC knew this from the start and the whole process was just a charade.
Anyone who knows the process knew it would be filled with fake comments. From both sides. It was obvious. The only people who are shocked, shocked I say, are ignorant people who still don't understand what the public comment process is intended for, or that it is required, or that there are laws called "paperwork reduction acts" that try to move everything that can be to online systems.
The FCC has been very good about moving things online, which makes things a LOT easier for everyone. For example, when you pass your amateur radio test, you can go to the FCC website and find out your callsign without having to wait for a paper copy of your license to appear in the mail. You can file renewals for free online. You can comment on proposed rules online. You want to find out the frequency your local cop shop uses, you can search online. You want to find the frequencies for every business in a 20 mile radius -- online search. Don't berate the FCC for putting everything it can online, including the public comment process. Do you REALLY want to have to send ten copies of a letter by USPS if you want to comment on something?
It's not a charade because it is part of the process of all FCC actions. Every proposed rule goes through this. It's required. Would you have preferred that the FCC declare "we know this is going to be a waste of time, so we're not doing it this time"? There would be tons of people jumping up and down berating the FCC for not doing it, even though everyone with at least half a brain knew how it was going to turn out.
Well, first, you hardly had to be technically proficient to spam the FCC comments form.
I didn't say you had to be. But you can expect that a topic dealing with the Internet will attract comments from a higher percentage of people who know how to do it in large volumes, and it is a hot-button topic for many of them. If you didn't expect fake comments, you weren't paying attention.
It was pretty much built to make spamming it as easy as possible.
It was built to make entering comments by the public easy. And it was built with the full knowledge that it is and was impossible to validate identity information. Not every regulatory action the FCC proposes is limited to technically competent computer users. Sometimes it's Mom and Pop who want to comment.
yes, I would entirely blame the people who put it up for thinking it would in any way be useful or indicative of public opinion.
That's not what it was put up for. It's a website for public comment on proposed regulatory matters.
If the comments are meant to be anonymous, why require a name on the form?
Jesus, you're good at trying to put words in my mouth, aren't you? I didn't say they were meant to be anonymous. I said that anonymous comments are allowed.
Nonsense. If you're upset because the FCC accepted fake anti-neutrality comments, then you better be just as upset because they accepted fake pro ones. Otherwise you are a hypocrite.
And once both were cleaned out, public sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of NN
You mean there were more comments. Using whatever name the person posting them entered. This wasn't a vote. It was a public comment period. The number of comments is irrelevant.
The hook this time is a senior enough politician who has an eye-catching angle and is willing to pick up the fight.
The fight for what? Provable identities on every public comment the FCC receives?
(1) Yes it looks like a crime to post fake comments here - 18 USC sec 1001, a felony for anyone to willfully make false or fictitious statements any any matter under the Executive Branch's jurisdiction.
Define "real name".
(2) Yes it looks like a violation of FCC's own rulemaking process to fail to address all comments it receives
"Address" does not mean "give equal consideration to" or even "pay any attention to". It certainly does not mean "give individual response to each comment".
(3) I believe it's a duty (but can't find evidence to back this up) of the FCC to gather opinions and evidence to support the decisions it takes.
That's what the public comment process is for. Evidence. Opinions are opinions. FCC regulation is not done via popular vote.
It boils down to this: I think it's an existing duty of the FCC to get feedback
They did. That's what the public comment process is for.
it's current mechanisms have been shown inadequate to the task
Are you seriously trying to claim that the comments it got were not "feedback"?
and I think the FCC is cavalier and/or negligent in its duty by failing to address the defects in its mechanisms.
I keep asking this, and nobody has yet provided an answer I've seen: exactly WHAT MECHANISM do you want the FCC to use to validate the names on submitted comments? Before you answer, that mechanism has to WORK. It has to allow anonymous comments. And it has to be relevant (as in, why is it relevant that a comment pointing out a significant issue with a proposed rule be identifiable to a specific person?).
Actually I believe it serves the FCCs ulterior purposes to leave the defective mechanisms in place, since it makes it easier for FCC to ignore its duties where it finds them inconvenient.
It makes no difference to the rule making process if 10,000 comments saying "don't do that, it's socialist! and we hate Comcast!" are all identifiable to 10,000 specific people or are all from one person. It is trivial to "address" that comment as 1 or 10,000. I've read FCC responses to public comments, and they've had no problem in the past saying "many submitters said X, which we found irrelevant to the rule as proposed" or using some other language dismissing irrelevant comments.
There is no good solution to the identification issue and no reason to solve it. The only people who think it is an issue now are those who think that the FCC is supposed to add up all the yeas and nays and make the rules based on that "vote". That is the only reason either side tried to flood the system -- an incorrect belief that quantity is more important that quality in the public comment system. That is the only reason why either side is now trying to have all the "fraudulent votes" on the opposing side thrown out.
The FCC comment process is, in other words, a complete shitshow
When vandals destroy something you like, do you blame the people who provided the nice thing for not being proactive enough to stop determined, technically proficient vandals, or do you blame the vandals?
The FCC public comment process, for the most part, works well, and provides the public a way to comment on proposed regulatory actions that impact it. I have participated before, and I have no reason to believe that the FCC pays significant attention to spammed or fake comments.
In THIS case, a computer-knowledgeable group of vandals (on both sides) did everything they could to turn the process into the shitshow it became.
Please tell me, sir, how you propose that the FCC validate the identity of every commenter, and why anonymous comments should never be allowed in response to a government request for comments.
In my opinion, if there is one place that anonymous comments must be allowed it is in dealings with the regulatory agencies of our government.
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On the other hand, it's difficult for phone in pocket to ask for confirmation,
No, not really. A simple pop-up asking "are you sure" would deal with a lot of butt dialing. Why do you think it would be difficult for the phone to do that? I get confirmations on a lot of things, like deleting SMSs, etc.
whereas Alexa can do it, and should do it.
And we don't know that it didn't. There's so little detail in the fine article, we don't know what happened. It's fun to make stuff up, less fun to admit we have no idea what actually happened.
If you have access to voice phone, you probably have access to Internet.
You have idea who I am or what I have access to "probably", but you'll happily tell me how much better my life would be if I would only do things your way. Please stop. I accept that you see no need for anything other than two sticks to rub together to make fire and a piece of string to catch fish. I'm happy you are happy with your life that way. Allow others to have their own lives, ok?
One might argue that it was inevitable that this would happen to someone eventually.
One might argue that not only is it inevitable, but that essentially the same thing has already happened to so many people that there is a name for it: butt dialing. Phone in pocket misinterprets "commands" and dials someone on your contact list or redials the last person you called, and then happily transmits the audio of everything it can hear to them.
This could also be done peer-to-peer, with your phone talking to a smart home controller in your home directly.
If you mean "using a web page interface", well, d'oh. That would require having access to the internet where I am. It also involves a middle-man or three. With Alexa, all I need to do is "phone home" and tell it what to do with something I have everywhere I go -- my voice.
As far as hitting a light switch, what's wrong with simply turning off the lights when you leave home, or even flipping a few breakers (anything but fridge and HVAC) if you go on vacay?
There is nothing wrong with turning lights off when I leave if I want them to be off for the entire time I am away. Flipping a breaker is really overkill and likewise un-fixable remotely when I decide I need to turn something on. With Alexa and the skill that talks to the local web server, I can do a huge number of things remotely. Whatever I can program I can do. Lights, radio, fan, send an email, reboot a computer, etc.
I understand that YOU see no need for this. That's fine. But YOU are not everyone else. Your disdain for the product as "useless" isn't binding on anyone else, and all the comments here of that kind are just noise. It's nice you don't like the product. Don't use it. Problem solved. Ninety-nine percent of the modern economy deals with things that are convenient, and this is just another example of that.
I don't have an Alexa so perhaps you could explain. It has a function where you can record a conversation then send the recorded conversation to a contact?
I believe they are currently advertising the ability to tell your device to do something like "call home" (Gramma gets a device, maybe it's Google's, dunno, card says "say call home" and she gets the kiddies.) For all we know from TFA, this is a case of Alexa hearing "Alexa ... call Frank ... " or whoever it was, and they recorded the message on Frank's voicemail.
Consider what is required to make this "rare" incident possible: - Alexa must continually record audio, and upload these recordings.
Wrong. All it requires is someone saying something that sounds like "Alexa" and the recording turns on. It doesn't have to be "continually".
- Alexa has access to your contacts list.
Yes. It will, if you've given it access.
- Alexa is able to send email, including attachments.
It probably can, but in this instance it was something sent to a phone. TFA is so devoid of technical details, and it is third party info, so it is entirely possible that the "audio files" that were "sent to a phone" are voicemail messages. Like butt-dialing but using Alexa.
How many people have any idea that Alexa has these capabilities?
Out of the group of people that have connected their contact list with Alexa so it can send messages to people on that list, probably ALL OF THEM.
Ok, ok, most people wouldn't care if they did know. I'll go cry in a corner now.
You really shouldn't allow other people so much control over your emotional state. Why do you care so much that some people value the convenience of an Alexa over the strict "tell nobody nothing" privacy restrictions you put on yourself?
I understand that this stuff it convenient to have, but like how hard it is to hit a damn light switch.
If I'm not home, really hard.
As a proof of concept I configured a "skill" so it could talk to a web server on my local network. All I did was connect it to one of my X10 lights, but it worked. With that framework I can have it do anything that can be programmed. That's more than "hit a damn light switch".
But your question points out the humor in a current ad. Woman turns on the lights, plays music, and then tries to start the washing machine. Oh no, her washing machine isn't controllable. Let's buy a new one, so she can start the laundry while she's standing next to the machine.
why on earth can't any of these assistance interpret commands locally 15 years later?
There is a big difference between a word recognition program like Dragon and a speech recognition and response system like Alexa.
Dragon worked great because, IIRC, you had to train it to your voice. All it did was convert speech to text. YOU had to speak the commands exactly the way the program you were controlling wanted them. If it got a word wrong, YOU had to correct it.
Alexa has to figure out the words AND what to do with them.
If you said to Dragon "tell me a Henny Youngman joke", it would type "tell me a Henny Youngman joke" into whatever program you were using. If you say that to Alexa, it has to try to figure out what a "Henny Youngman" is, what a joke is, that you want it to tell you something, and then tell you. (It can't -- it doesn't know what a "Henny Youngman" is. Or Steven Wright. Stoopid monkey.)
You can be very serious about privacy, but incompetent enough to not be able to do anything good about it.
Or you can be serious about privacy and design a complicated system that is intended to operate on voice commands that sometimes gets things wrong.
The Fine Article is so completely devoid of details as to be useless. There is not a single mention of why this happened. Did the owners say something that sounded like "Alexa", and something that sounded like "send this to Frank"? Or was it something else? The Alexa I have consistently responded when it heard someone refer to Alexi Lalas on the TV. It also responded when the police scanner reported that a Lexus was being pulled over. This doesn't seem like an outrageous mistake to me. Did those people say something that was misinterpreted?
This is how bad the article is: it first says the recording was sent to a random person in Seattle, THEN it says it was someone on their contact list. Random, not random. Same sentence.
Maybe someday /. will start linking to technically relevant information in technical stories, instead of clickbait TV station pages.
The first part of the post is you claiming without evidence that this is a common practice, while every study on the matter has concluded the very opposite.
Anyone who lives anywhere near Chicago knows the truth, and Chicago isn't unique. The names change but the machine stays the same. You can trot out a thousand "studies" by groups that have no interest in fixing the system as proof that it doesn't happen; watching it happen proves otherwise.
Don't plead ignorance here. It's well known that these are methods to disenfranchise the living voters in the state.
Yeah, purging the roles of dead people is just a way to disenfranchise the living. No bias in THAT claim, is there?
As for dead voters, that's primarily a problem of voter rolls, and fixing voter roll problems also fixes the other actual form of meatbag fraud.
Yeah, if the system were perfect there would be no fraud. But it isn't, and claiming there is no fraud is just sticking your head in the sand. You might notice, the same people who claim there is no vote fraud are also the ones who don't want to fix the voter rolls. And when someone shows up who does want to fix the rolls, the ones who don't want them fixed cry "racism!". We haven't seen that in THIS discussion, have we?
I don't know what the "it" in that paragraph refers to.
The existing public comment system.
I agree that "interest groups" and "spokespeople" are allowed to comment in the existing system. However, the existing system doesn't satisfy the major points I put forward.
It allows anyone who wants to comment to do so. There is nothing disrespectful in the current system. The current rules do NOT say that the FCC has to respond to every comment. That's your major points 1 and 2. Since the FCC is not violating the rules, then your major point 3 is moot.
It's not very productive for you to to snip to just this one isolated clause in my proposal.
It's not very productive to just keep repeating claims that aren't true. It's also not very productive to ignore the issue that is the heart of this discussion: "identity theft" and the ability of people to use fake names when making public comments on FCC NPRM.
You keep talking about the FCC "attend[ing] to every comment" but they aren't required to do that. You want "more respect", but I can't figure out what "actionable hook" has been created regarding that or how to achieve your goal. There needs to be "a different system" that has "more respect", but you don't explain how a different system would solve the problem with this one: inability to validate identities of commenters. That's a problem for ANY system.
I "snipped" to that one part of your proposal because the implication was that the current system was flawed in this area. Why do we need a different, new system to allow spokespeople from "interest groups" to comment if you think the current system already allows that?
Do you have solid, actionable proposals for solving the issue with the current system or just repeated calls for a new system that does the same things the current one already does?
I firmly believe they shouldn't answer each and every comment, and they shouldn't be expected to.
Then what is the problem? They didn't do what you don't expect them to anyway. What is the "actionable hook" that we're creating by all of this? What do you mean by "attend to" that they didn't do, if you don't think they need to respond to every comment -- you did say it was their duty to "attend to every comment". If they don't need to attend to every comment, then what duty did they fail to perform?
I think however that they've knowingly chosen a submission-and-evidence-receiving mechanism (the comments website) which is doomed to be unworkable.
Except it has worked very well for many many other NPRM and regulatory issues. It gathered a lot of cruft for THIS ONE because of the heat and deliberate misrepresentation and politics of THIS ONE. There is no public comment system that would have done better, except one that was heavily censored and had strict identity validation mechanisms. I've yet to hear anyone suggest a validation method, yet it's the crux of "solving" this "problem".
The high volume of junk there doesn't absolve them of the duty to gather important and relevant submissions in some form or other.
They did that. The fact that there were a lot of junk comments doesn't negate all the valid ones they got.
I think they're pointing to junk comments and saying basically that they've fulfilled their duty via the website and there's nothing they can usefully do with the responses.
They fulfilled their duty to have a public comment, via the website and all the other mechanisms. They can point to the junk comments and honestly say that there is nothing they can usefully do with them because they are junk. We all admit that they are junk. What should they do with them otherwise?
The system did what it was supposed to do. The fact that some people tried to overwhelm it with crap doesn't change the basic system or the honest comments.
No I don't want to prosecute people for that.
Then why bother trying to claim there are so many laws that prohibit it? If there is no reason to prosecute, who cares what laws you think exist (but don't actually prove.)
Avoid the question? Sure I haven't answered the question because -- as I've said explicitly -- I don't think it's important.
It is the critical question if you are going to keep harping about how the system isn't fulfilling the FCC requirements for accepting comments. The system accepts comments, so that can't be the broken part. It must be the part about identifying the commenter. How do you do that?
I'd design a very different feedback mechanism for the FCC.
It's not a FEEDBACK SYSTEM. It's not a vote. It's not a referendum. It's not a poll. It's not an opinion gatherer. It's a PUBLIC COMMENT system. What things do the FCC need to consider that they already haven't. It doesn't matter if 8 million people all say the same thing, it's ONE THING overall. It doesn't matter if one person says it, if it is relevant.
It'd start with interest groups with spokespeople,
"Interest groups" with "spokespeople" are allowed to comment in the existing system. You don't need to redesign anything.
I'm not talking about comments submitted to the website. I'm talking about what I've read of its public consultation process,
Which is the public comment process via the web or other media.
And it DOES NOT WORK.
That explains why it has been used for decades in some places. It doesn't work, so they keep doing it. Hmmm.
You can deny it all day, but that doesn't change anything.
This type of fraud is so rare that for all practical purposes,
Except where it has been used, it isn't used. Check. If it makes you feel more secure to deny it, ok.
This is an attempt to disenfranchise voters under the guise of election integrity.
Yeah, keeping dead people from voting is such a disenfranchisement. Really. The dead have rights, too!
Donald Trump has maintained that his Twitter account is an official outlet, so to block accounts would violate the right to petition.
So, let's say I'm the mayor of a city. I get a phone installed in my office with an unpublished number that I use to make outgoing official calls. According to this argument, if someone starts distributing my unlisted number and thousands of people start calling that phone, so many that I cannot use it for anything, I can't tell the telephone company to block all incoming calls because I would be violating all of those people's right to "redress" or "petition", using that phone line? Because I use the phone to make official calls, I must allow any and all incoming calls, even though there are a hundred other phone lines for incoming calls available?
That sounds silly, to me.
So if they are pursuing this, they are using their own "identity theft" as a means of forcing the issue into the light again so they can discuss the broader effect of millions of fake comments.
And what is the "broader effect" of millions of fake comments? Exactly what difference did they make in anything?
The only result is a tempest in a teapot over something that anyone who knew the process could have, and probably did, predict. Gee, hot-button issue combined with public record and easy comment submission resulted in floods of fake comments that everyone could examine for themselves. I'm shocked. It's never happened before. Ever. In the history of the world.
By using the term "identity theft" for this, these two Senators (who should know better) are diluting the term for the times when there is real identity theft.
I have a very rare last name,
And there is no law preventing anyone else from choosing to use that name for themselves, EXCEPT if they are doing it for the specific purpose of committing fraud in the legal sense. E.g., if I use your name to try to get a credit card expecting you to get the bill, that's legal fraud. If I use your name to subscribe to the local newspaper blog without any reference to you at all, that is not fraud in the legal sense.
Yet somehow a comment was left with her name and her address supporting net neutrality repeal,
So what is the FCC supposed to do to prevent that from happening? Be angry at someone who lied in her name, and be angry at those on both sides that did it, but if you want to be angry at the FCC then explain what steps they should take to prevent that from happening. How do they validate the identity of the person who did that so they could have prevented it?
How do you explain that?
It's pretty obvious. Someone lied on a comment form.
The other reason is it's a basic part of democracy that the FCC should pay attention to what people think and should base its decisions on evidence;
The FCC public comment period is NOT A VOTE. It is NOT A DEMOCRACY. They read the comments and consider them for what they contain -- not who makes them. The public comments may or may not contain this "evidence" which you think is so critical. They are not, by themselves, evidence.
it enshrined part of this duty in its own rule-making process which requires it to attend to every comment.
You have some twisted definition of "attend to" if you think it means they have to answer each and every comment.
If it then says "we can't pay attention to the comments because there were too many of them and they were junk"
Saying that they found the 8 million junk comments unconvincing is "attend[ing] to" them with one sentence. They will, of course, not pay attention to the junk comments, in the sense that they will not change the outcome. Why would you expect them to? They're junk comments.
Define "real name".
Why should I define it?
Because you want to prosecute people for lying to the government on an FCC public comment website. That means you must think there is some definition of "real name" that has to be used or else there is some crime committed. If you can't define it, then stop pretending it's a crime not to use one, Mr. ljw1004.
There's a statue in place.
Heh.
That's a strange question for you to be asking me.
You're the one who is unhappy that people are using fake names on an FCC website to make public comments where real names are irrelevant to start with. Who else would I ask about validating those names?
I see only these three questions at this stage: (1) do we have reason to believe that it's IMPOSSIBLE to gather feedback in a way that's compatible with the FCC's existing duties and rules?
Nobody is debating that. Of course it is not impossible, they are doing it all the time. I've participated in the process before, and I chose not to waste my time this time. Everything that I would have said was said by many other people, so my comment would not add new information.
The question you are avoiding is how they would possibly VALIDATE every name entered into the comment forms. Tell us all how you think that can be done. I'll wait while you think something up.
I think the important issue is numerous pieces of corroborating evidence which together paint picture of an FCC that willfully ignored all evidence that disagreed with its vision.
Oh, poppycock. You have no such evidence. You don't know what comments they did and did not consider fully, you only know that you see ALL of the public comments that are on the public record. Yes, you see ALL the comments on the public record because that's how the public record works.
I can't see what the point of the comments process was: The results were sure to be so full of fake submissions as to be completely meaningless, and it's pretty clear the FCC knew this from the start and the whole process was just a charade.
Anyone who knows the process knew it would be filled with fake comments. From both sides. It was obvious. The only people who are shocked, shocked I say, are ignorant people who still don't understand what the public comment process is intended for, or that it is required, or that there are laws called "paperwork reduction acts" that try to move everything that can be to online systems.
The FCC has been very good about moving things online, which makes things a LOT easier for everyone. For example, when you pass your amateur radio test, you can go to the FCC website and find out your callsign without having to wait for a paper copy of your license to appear in the mail. You can file renewals for free online. You can comment on proposed rules online. You want to find out the frequency your local cop shop uses, you can search online. You want to find the frequencies for every business in a 20 mile radius -- online search. Don't berate the FCC for putting everything it can online, including the public comment process. Do you REALLY want to have to send ten copies of a letter by USPS if you want to comment on something?
It's not a charade because it is part of the process of all FCC actions. Every proposed rule goes through this. It's required. Would you have preferred that the FCC declare "we know this is going to be a waste of time, so we're not doing it this time"? There would be tons of people jumping up and down berating the FCC for not doing it, even though everyone with at least half a brain knew how it was going to turn out.
Well, first, you hardly had to be technically proficient to spam the FCC comments form.
I didn't say you had to be. But you can expect that a topic dealing with the Internet will attract comments from a higher percentage of people who know how to do it in large volumes, and it is a hot-button topic for many of them. If you didn't expect fake comments, you weren't paying attention.
It was pretty much built to make spamming it as easy as possible.
It was built to make entering comments by the public easy. And it was built with the full knowledge that it is and was impossible to validate identity information. Not every regulatory action the FCC proposes is limited to technically competent computer users. Sometimes it's Mom and Pop who want to comment.
yes, I would entirely blame the people who put it up for thinking it would in any way be useful or indicative of public opinion.
That's not what it was put up for. It's a website for public comment on proposed regulatory matters.
If the comments are meant to be anonymous, why require a name on the form?
Jesus, you're good at trying to put words in my mouth, aren't you? I didn't say they were meant to be anonymous. I said that anonymous comments are allowed.
False equivalence.
Nonsense. If you're upset because the FCC accepted fake anti-neutrality comments, then you better be just as upset because they accepted fake pro ones. Otherwise you are a hypocrite.
And once both were cleaned out, public sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of NN
You mean there were more comments. Using whatever name the person posting them entered. This wasn't a vote. It was a public comment period. The number of comments is irrelevant.
Which takes less effort,
We're not talking about what takes less effort, we're talking about what works. And has been used for generations.
If meatbag impersonation is anywhere near the top of your list of electoral concerns,
I got it. You think that only the very tip top of any list of concerns should be dealt with. Ignore everything but what you think is the easiest.
Some of us can multi-task. It's a handy talent. You should google it.
The hook this time is a senior enough politician who has an eye-catching angle and is willing to pick up the fight.
The fight for what? Provable identities on every public comment the FCC receives?
(1) Yes it looks like a crime to post fake comments here - 18 USC sec 1001, a felony for anyone to willfully make false or fictitious statements any any matter under the Executive Branch's jurisdiction.
Define "real name".
(2) Yes it looks like a violation of FCC's own rulemaking process to fail to address all comments it receives
"Address" does not mean "give equal consideration to" or even "pay any attention to". It certainly does not mean "give individual response to each comment".
(3) I believe it's a duty (but can't find evidence to back this up) of the FCC to gather opinions and evidence to support the decisions it takes.
That's what the public comment process is for. Evidence. Opinions are opinions. FCC regulation is not done via popular vote.
It boils down to this: I think it's an existing duty of the FCC to get feedback
They did. That's what the public comment process is for.
it's current mechanisms have been shown inadequate to the task
Are you seriously trying to claim that the comments it got were not "feedback"?
and I think the FCC is cavalier and/or negligent in its duty by failing to address the defects in its mechanisms.
I keep asking this, and nobody has yet provided an answer I've seen: exactly WHAT MECHANISM do you want the FCC to use to validate the names on submitted comments? Before you answer, that mechanism has to WORK. It has to allow anonymous comments. And it has to be relevant (as in, why is it relevant that a comment pointing out a significant issue with a proposed rule be identifiable to a specific person?).
Actually I believe it serves the FCCs ulterior purposes to leave the defective mechanisms in place, since it makes it easier for FCC to ignore its duties where it finds them inconvenient.
It makes no difference to the rule making process if 10,000 comments saying "don't do that, it's socialist! and we hate Comcast!" are all identifiable to 10,000 specific people or are all from one person. It is trivial to "address" that comment as 1 or 10,000. I've read FCC responses to public comments, and they've had no problem in the past saying "many submitters said X, which we found irrelevant to the rule as proposed" or using some other language dismissing irrelevant comments.
There is no good solution to the identification issue and no reason to solve it. The only people who think it is an issue now are those who think that the FCC is supposed to add up all the yeas and nays and make the rules based on that "vote". That is the only reason either side tried to flood the system -- an incorrect belief that quantity is more important that quality in the public comment system. That is the only reason why either side is now trying to have all the "fraudulent votes" on the opposing side thrown out.
The FCC comment process is, in other words, a complete shitshow
When vandals destroy something you like, do you blame the people who provided the nice thing for not being proactive enough to stop determined, technically proficient vandals, or do you blame the vandals?
The FCC public comment process, for the most part, works well, and provides the public a way to comment on proposed regulatory actions that impact it. I have participated before, and I have no reason to believe that the FCC pays significant attention to spammed or fake comments.
In THIS case, a computer-knowledgeable group of vandals (on both sides) did everything they could to turn the process into the shitshow it became.
Please tell me, sir, how you propose that the FCC validate the identity of every commenter, and why anonymous comments should never be allowed in response to a government request for comments.
In my opinion, if there is one place that anonymous comments must be allowed it is in dealings with the regulatory agencies of our government.