FCC Blocks Probe Of Net Neutrality ‘Fake Comments’: Official

WASHINGTON, DC — Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai allowed the deck to be stacked against net neutrality and refused to cooperate in an investigation of a suspected scheme to corrupt the public comment process on the Trump administration's plan to repeal the Obama-era rules equalizing internet access, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman charged in an open letter published this week.

Pai said this week his agency is preparing to dispense with the net neutrality rules that prohibit high-speed internet service providers from stopping or slowing the delivery of websites. Without the rules, cable and telecom companies could potentially favor some websites over others and throttle speeds for those they don’t see as valuable. Repeal advocates say that’s not likely to happen because of the risk of alienating customers and because new FCC rules would require transparency by providers, giving customers the option to get their service elsewhere.

Schneiderman said in the letter that an investigation by his office found “enormous numbers of fake comments” favoring the repeal had been submitted during the public comment period on the rule. Some of the comments were submitted under made-up names and addresses, but others misused the names of real people, he wrote, comparing it to “identity theft … on a massive scale.”

“In doing so,” he wrote, “the perpetrator or perpetrators attacked what is supposed to be an open public process by attempting to drown out and negate the views of real people, businesses, and others who honestly commented on this important issues.”

Schneiderman said his office began investigating after an analysis of the suspect comments showed tens of thousands of residents of New York may have had their identities misused. It also showed that hundreds of thousands of Americans concentrated in California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas may have been victimized, he wrote.

Yet Pai and multiple other top FCC officials have refused at least nine times over five months to release records “necessary to investigate which bad actor or actors were behind the misconduct,” Schneiderman wrote, noting records requests have been made monthly since June, including three times in October.

Schneiderman acknowledged his long record of advocacy for strong net neutrality rules, but said his investigation “isn’t about the substantive issues concerning net neutrality.”

The comments favoring the repeal don’t square with studies showing “the overwhelming majority of Americans who took the time to write public comments to the FCC about the issue feel the same way while a very small minority favor repeal,” he wrote.

“But this isn’t about that,” he wrote. “It’s about the right to control one’s own identity and prevent the corruption of a process designed to solicit the opinion of real people and institutions. Misuse of identity online by the hundreds of thousands should concern everyone — for and against net neutrality, New Yorker or Texan, Democrat or Republican.”

The letter asking the FCC to turn over the records went to Pai; Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Michael O’Rielly, Brendan Carr, and Jessica Rosenworcel; FCC General Counsel Thomas M. Johnson Jr.; and Inspector General David L. Hunt.

“In an era where foreign governments have indisputably tried to use the internet and social media to influence our elections, federal and state governments should be working together to ensure that malevolent actors cannot subvert our administrative agencies’ decision-making processes,” he wrote.

In a statement, the FCC said the New York attorney general’s “so-called investigation is nothing more than a transparent attempt by a partisan supporter of the Obama administration’s heavy-handed internet regulations to gain publicity for himself,” CNBC reported.

Schneiderman’s press secretary, Amy Spitalnick, fired back, saying “the potential impersonation of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to influence the policy-making process should concern everyone — especially the FCC.”

"Yet rather than cooperate with our investigation, the commission has stonewalled it, and now offers political attacks to distract from the core issue — the manipulation of the FCC's own regulatory process," she said.

See Also: Net Neutrality Under President Trump: 5 Things To Know

(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)