Ajit Pai admits Russians created half a million comments on net neutrality

[Mormolyce]

FCC chairman acknowledges Russians interfered in net neutrality debate
About half a million comments sent to the agency about the net neutrality repeal were from Russian email addresses, Ajit Pai says in a memo.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said earlier this week that roughly 500,000 comments submitted during the debate over the controversial repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules were linked to Russian email addresses.

The disclosure was made in a statement filed this week in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted by The New York Times and BuzzFeed. In the statement, Pai refers to "the half-million comments submitted from Russian e-mail addresses."

Pai's acknowledgement that Russians played a role in last year's net neutrality debate shows how widespread Russia's campaign to influence US democracy extends. US intelligence and law enforcement have accused Russian groups of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by using stolen identities to pose as Americans on Facebook and Instagram, creating Facebook groups, buying divisive ads and posting inflammatory images.

It seems groups were employing some of the same techniques to influence the net neutrality debate, which resulted in a record number of comments being submitted to the FCC. But even as comments were pouring in, public policy watchdogs were sounding alarms.

Reviews of the public record found that 2 million of the 22 million comments submitted to the FCC used stolen identities, some for people who were dead, including actress Patty Duke, who died in 2016. Nearly 8 million comments used email domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com. About half a million were sent from Russian email addresses. And of the emails that came from legitimate email addresses, the vast majority were form letters originating from the same pro- and anti-net neutrality groups.

Then there was the controversy over a supposed cyberattack on the comment system that temporarily shut down the platform on exactly the same day thousands of net neutrality supporters responded to comedian John Oliver's call to flood the agency with comments.That cyberattack was confirmed to be false, after more than a year of speculation, following the release of a report by the agency's internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General.

The Times and BuzzFeed News filed FOIA requests in an effort to learn more about the fraudulent comments submitted to the FCC. But the FCC has refused the requests for records, citing privacy and security concerns. In September, the Times sued the agency. The court case is still pending, but the newspaper appealed once again to the FCC to reverse its decision to withhold the information. Earlier this week, the FCC again denied the Times' request.

Jessica Rosenworcel, the only Democrat on the FCC, disagreed with the majority's decision to withhold the records. And in a statement, she slammed the Republican-led agency.

"What is the Federal Communications Commission hiding?" she asked in her statement. "Something here is rotten -- and it's time for the FCC to come clean."

Pai responded in his own statement, accusing Rosenworcel of not supporting previous efforts on his part to improve transparency at the FCC when the agency was led by Democrats.

"What has changed between then and now?" he said. "Literally nothing, other than the political affiliation of the FCC's leadership (and a lot more transparency now than the agency ever had then)."

The news agencies aren't the only ones looking for answers. The New York Attorney General's Office opened an investigation into the fake comments last November, a month before the net neutrality repeal vote.

Sens. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, and Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania -- who both had their identities stolen and then used to post fake public comments -- have also called on the FCC to address the issue.

https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-chairm...rality-debate/

Fun fact, Russia itself more or less has net neutrality, at least on paper.

After almost 4 years of discussion, in early 2016 Federal Antimonopoly Service approved a regulation blocking ISPs from throttling or otherwise blocking any websites apart from those blocked at the request of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, thus protecting net neutrality in Russia.[64][65]

In September 2007, the Russian government's Resolution No 575 introduced regulation rules of telematics services. Network operators (ISPs) could legally limit individual actions of the subscriber's network activity, if such actions threatened the normal functioning of the network. ISPs were obliged to exclude the possibility of access to information systems, network addresses, or uniform pointers which a subscriber informs the operator of communication in the form specified in the contract. The subscriber was obliged to take actions to protect the subscriber terminal from the impact of malicious software and to prevent the spread of spam and malicious software to its subscriber terminal. In reality, most Russian ISPs shaped the traffic of P2P protocols (like BitTorrent) with lower priority (P2P was about of 80% of traffic there). Also, there was popular method, called retracker,[66][67] for redirecting some BitTorrent traffic to the ISP's cache servers and other subscribers inside of a metropolitan area network (MAN). Access to MANs is usually with greater speed (2x–1000x or more, specified in the contract) and better quality than the rest of the Internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_ne...country#Russia

Awfully interesting that they felt the need to push the Republican line on this one, no? Kind of like how Marina Butina infiltrated the NRA on the pretense of Russia being pro-gun (hint: it isn't).

[caervek]

So, were they in favour of NN or against it? Or both? Doesn't really say.

[derpkitteh]

So, were they in favour of NN or against it? Or both? Doesn't really say.

against, that was the republican position.

as bad as russia can be, i'm still more worried about china as an existential threat to us all. i just hope we can stop it.

[Mormolyce]

So, were they in favour of NN or against it? Or both? Doesn't really say.

Further reading:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/1...analysis-finds

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...s-astroturfing

https://medium.com/ragtag-notes/bot-...y-8c77ee54a02e

The bots were opposed to net neutrality. Unique comments were 95% plus in favour of it. Which matches fairly well with polling:

According to a study conducted for industry front group Broadband for America, 98.5 percent of legitimate comments supported Net Neutrality. Public polling after the FCC’s 2017 decision shows overwhelming majorities of Democrats (90 percent), Republicans (82 percent) and independents (85 percent) opposed Pai’s repeal of the Net Neutrality protections.

https://medium.com/@timkarr/why-pai-...s-dcfbada90f8d

[PL-Cibo]

against, that was the republican position.

as bad as russia can be, i'm still more worried about china as an existential threat to us all. i just hope we can stop it.

i'm still more worried about the US, a country with a government that, it seems, doesn't have a problem with giving up their sovereignty as long as it suits their needs. And existential threat? oh please, the only threat to you is yourself.

[Shalcker]

They allowed 8 millions from generated fake emails? That seems like much bigger contribution.

Most likely Telecoms paid firms that in turn paid for bots rather then that being some kind of political campaign.

[Omega10]

They allowed 8 millions from generated fake emails? That seems like much bigger contribution.

Most likely Telecoms paid firms that in turn paid for bots rather then that being some kind of political campaign.

Here is the relevant paragraph:

Reviews of the public record found that 2 million of the 22 million comments submitted to the FCC used stolen identities, some for people who were dead, including actress Patty Duke, who died in 2016. Nearly 8 million comments used email domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com. About half a million were sent from Russian email addresses. And of the emails that came from legitimate email addresses, the vast majority were form letters originating from the same pro- and anti-net neutrality groups.

So it would seem that your conjecture has quite a bit of validity. At least 8 million fake comments, and a half a million Russian comments. So, one explanation for this is that basically some Russian firms just got their piece of the pie.

From the data I see here, it seems that the fraud was initiated by presumably US Telecoms, who seemed to have used Russian companies as well as US ones to execute their fraudulent activity.

[Noomz]

https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-chairm...rality-debate/

Fun fact, Russia itself more or less has net neutrality, at least on paper.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_ne...country#Russia

Awfully interesting that they felt the need to push the Republican line on this one, no? Kind of like how Marina Butina infiltrated the NRA on the pretense of Russia being pro-gun (hint: it isn't).

Russians, trolling the world like champions.

- - - Updated - - -

They allowed 8 millions from generated fake emails? That seems like much bigger contribution.

Most likely Telecoms paid firms that in turn paid for bots rather then that being some kind of political campaign.

THat also happened. I remember seeing screenshots of Totally Human Posters.

[Nerovar]

i'm still more worried about the US, a country with a government that, it seems, doesn't have a problem with giving up their sovereignty as long as it suits their needs. And existential threat? oh please, the only threat to you is yourself.

But I don't want to learn Chinese.

[melodramocracy]

Thank god he has an excuse for his shitty decision making if / when his job is ever on the line.

[Draco-Onis]

Thank god he has an excuse for his shitty decision making if / when his job is ever on the line.

After he is done screwing the American consumer I am sure he will get a cozy job at one of the telecoms most likely verizon paying millions as a reward for a job well done.

[Pratt]

Thank god he has an excuse for his shitty decision making if / when his job is ever on the line.

I don't remember the exact story, but wasn't it clear at the time that the comments were bs?

[Charge me Doctor]

All you haters are Russians! (c) Ajit Pai
Brilliant

[Unbelievr]

I think this one is the best pieces of evidence: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filing/1051157755251

There's been no doubt that something fishy went on there.

[Deleted]

why is that foreigner even allowed to lead anything in america? send him back to pakistan...

[Techno-Druid]

why is that foreigner even allowed to lead anything in america? send him back to pakistan...

Ajit Pai is an American and he's of Indian descent...

[Deleted]

Ajit Pai is an American and he's of Indian descent...

just because he bought citizenship doesnt make him a real american, send him back to india, where he belongs

[Nadiru]

500k whole comments? So, maybe fifteen minutes worth of Reddit output on the subject?

[Techno-Druid]

just because he bought citizenship doesnt make him a real american, send him back to india, where he belongs

He was born in America.

[Unholyground]

Should he not be investigated and arrested if he knows.