8 ms·

Prominent D.C. media firm implicated in fake FCC comments

282 points by spac 8y ago

stark3 8y ago
Sickening how easy it was for the telcoms to push their agenda through in spite of overwhelming public opposition. I'm pretty sure most individuals following the story of net neutrality knew the fcc's ballot box was compromised. It would be nice if someone could face consequences for the fraud put on by the FCC. I won't hold my breath though.
- Simon_says 8y ago
  This one always cracked me up: The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation. I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the internet known as Title II and restore the bipartisan light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the internet to flourish for more than 20 years. The plan currently under consideration at the FCC to repeal Obama's Title II power grab is a positive step forward and will help to promote a truly free and open internet for everyone. Barack Obama 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  The thing is, "the ballot box" you refer to was just a way for random people on the internet to submit comments. It isn't intended, I think, as a way to guide policy. I expect that they switched to web-based commentary because, historically, they've accepted letters and the web-forms are just an "upgrade". Who's going to hire staff to open, read and respond to letters these days? These fake "grassroots" operatives merely abused the web-commentary system in order to keep the FCC leadership (and Republicans) from being completely humiliated by the sheer number of people in favor of net neutrality. Turns out, they got sloppy and went a bit overboard. What is really disturbing, however, is that the company named, "CQ" is in the business of automating "campaigns" with software and data analysis. To them, it doesn't matter WHAT the campaign actually is as long as they get a paying customer-- smears and disinformation is just another day of work for them. There's so many layers of slime here, it's hard to know where to start.
  - acdha 8y ago
    > It isn't intended, I think, as a way to guide policy. Public comment is explicitly intended to guide policy. It’s not a vote but the entire point of the process is to get feedback before a policy is finalized and most agencies attempt to address common points. It’s reasonable to question the inherent assumption of good faith with the current administration but we’re also in an unusual time where the most cynical view of previous administrations are now the smart money view of how things work.
    - ikeboy 8y ago
      Public comment is meant to surface arguments to be taken into account to guide policy. As such, having 1 or 10 million people make the exact same argument in the same words doesn't change anything.
      - acdha 8y ago
        This is only true in the most simple cases. If there’s any portion of a proposed policy which is balancing different interests - which is almost always the case - the ratio of comments is a useful metric because it would surface problems such as e.g. a policy which big companies are comfortable with but hit many small ones with substantial compliance overhead. In this case, having tons of AstroTurf comments allows them to say that there’s public support outside of large ISPs. Given how anticompetitive the decision was, they needed that fig leaf.
        rayiner 8y ago
        No agency would be on firm footing pointing to a large number of identical form comments received for one side as a factor in a balancing of interests. It would not survive the “reasoned decision making” requirement. To the extent you’re talking about balancing the needs of small and large companies, for example, you’d have to point to concrete examples and data. That could come in comments (small businesses talking about real challenges they’ve faced), but relying on a large number of identical form comments wouldn’t pass muster.
sitkack 8y ago
With so many rotten apples, maybe the tree should go. This is a gigantic, criminal subversion of Democracy that the FCC remains complicit in, something that only jail time can fix.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > something that only jail time can fix Who is violating what law? The entire point of rule of law is pissed off randos, even if there are many of them, don’t merit being put in jail.
  - creato 8y ago
    > Duby is one of the 24 people who signed the open letter in May 2017 demanding that her comment be removed by the FCC. Of 14 others who said their names were “used to file comments we did not make,” Gizmodo was able to duplicate the experiment 12 times. 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. (For reasons unclear, two of the signatories’ comments could not be located.) This is alleging that CQ impersonated people to file comments with the FCC. I don't know if this meets the legal requirements to be considered some kind of fraud, but it sure seems like it should.
    - ikeboy 8y ago
      No, it's alleging that CQ submitted those comments. There's no reason to believe based on this article that CQ impersonated people - what's more likely is that they operated websites to gather comments and people submitted false names through there. If you look at the linked WSJ article you'll see there were fake comments on many of the common templates, some associated with pro-NN groups and some against.
      - outsidetheparty 8y ago
        The investigation focuses on a specific anti-NN comment that was submitted, identically worded, hundreds of thousands of times, in alphabetical order by name. That's not "people submitting false names" through a website, it's obviously organized fraud. If you're suggesting that CQ was just the unwitting middleman between the FCC and some other group that was submitting the fraudulent comments through their site, that would have been trivially detectable and filtered out by CQ: > “Before we submit these comments (via the API) we remove any bad or questionable submissions,” he told Gizmodo. “On a technical level, a few of the things we do include running the email address through an email validator, eliminate duplicate records with the same email address, and remove multiple submissions from the same IP address.”
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Who are prominent clients of CQ Roll Call?
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
This is treason and I don’t see why it would be punished differently.
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  But...this isn't treason. Fraud, yes. Definitely fraud. But unless there is some other evidence that this fraud was committed with the specific intent of aiding a foreign power rather than just line the pockets of the telecoms, then no, not treason.
  - JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
    “the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.” Maybe I’m being a little hyperbolic, it isn’t the government being overthrown but one branch of it and certainly what the public wanted was intentionally silenced.
    - smt88 8y ago
      The Republican Party is the minority party and have most of the power in the US at every level. By definition, most things that they do will be fairly unpopular, and some things they do will be wildly unpopular.
    - jimrandomh 8y ago
      You are being more than a little bit hyperbolic, and it's bad for the conversation when people do that.
    - javagram 8y ago
      Expansive interpretations of "Treason", such as the one you propose, are explicitly prohibited by the US Constitution due to their abuse by european monarchies to silence dissent. "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." Article 3 Section 3. As a result of this strict standard, the last successful prosecution for treason in the USA was in 1952...
1024core 8y ago
Money quote: an FCC spokesperson said comments from the general public are “generally not substantive, so thus have no impact on a rulemaking.” There you have it. So the number of comments is useful only when it helps make whatever point they're trying to make.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Independent federal agencies are, by design not accountable to public opinion, except indirectly through the election of the President, who appoints commissioners. Agencies are designed to be guided by expert opinions and judgment. The purpose of APA comments, thefore, is not to poll the public. It is to ensure that the agency considers all the relevant “written data, views, or arguments.” 5 USC 553(c). Legally, a rule making cannot be challenged on the basis that it is contrary to the weight of public opinion. It can only be challenged on the basis that the order adopting the rule doesn’t adequately address the “data, views, and arguments” raised in the comments. https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1326&context=olr https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl.... Accordingly, a large number of comments that raise the same views cannot have any impact in the rule making. The soundbite you quoted, therefore, is a completely unremarkable statement about regulatory law. That also makes sense. Regulatory agencies micro-manage businesses to a greater degree than ordinary legislation, including managing prices. When you remove those things from the purview of the market and business judgment, you can’t subject it to the whims of the public. If you had a vote on it, electricity would be free and there would be no money to invest in power plants or the grid. (Now, spamming an agency website with fake comments is a highly problematic action from a systems integrity and computer security point of view, no doubt. That’s a separate issue from the agency’s rule making policy.)
  - jkaplowitz 8y ago
    Everything you said makes sense and seems accurate, except for one important detail: while the agencies aren't required to consider or obey the weight of public opinion, on issues with significant public interest they ought to voluntarily consider public opinion (even if they choose to reject it). After all, they serve the public despite the indirect accountability, and often there is more than one path which the experts deem viable. Public preference can be an appropriate in choosing among the viable paths. In this situation, when the coordinated fake comments line up with the governing politicians' views, and when both run contrary to the weight of real comments from experts and non-experts alike, it casts doubt on the genuineness of the FCC's good faith in considering even the expert public comments, and therefore on the validity of the rulemaking overall.
mitchbob 8y ago
Faking an identity online for political manipulation should be a felony, full stop.
- dec0dedab0de 8y ago
  That could end up outlawing Pseudonyms and fictional characters. The real problem is that the government would accept public comment through an unauthenticated web form.
craftinator 8y ago
Paid for by.... Mr. Pai? Follow the money...
virgakwolfw 8y ago
Yet somehow Mazzella and Williams won’t even suffer a scratch in their reputation- let alone real penalties. But somehow, when the IRS audited Conservative non-profit organizations that were skirting political laws- the head of the IRS was called in for questioning and a multitude of investigations started.

282 points by spac 8y ago

Sickening how easy it was for the telcoms to push their agenda through in spite of overwhelming public opposition. I'm pretty sure most individuals following the story of net neutrality knew the fcc's ballot box was compromised. It would be nice if someone could face consequences for the fraud put on by the FCC. I won't hold my breath though.

Simon_says 8y ago
This one always cracked me up: The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation. I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the internet known as Title II and restore the bipartisan light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the internet to flourish for more than 20 years. The plan currently under consideration at the FCC to repeal Obama's Title II power grab is a positive step forward and will help to promote a truly free and open internet for everyone. Barack Obama 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
crispyambulance 8y ago
The thing is, "the ballot box" you refer to was just a way for random people on the internet to submit comments. It isn't intended, I think, as a way to guide policy. I expect that they switched to web-based commentary because, historically, they've accepted letters and the web-forms are just an "upgrade". Who's going to hire staff to open, read and respond to letters these days? These fake "grassroots" operatives merely abused the web-commentary system in order to keep the FCC leadership (and Republicans) from being completely humiliated by the sheer number of people in favor of net neutrality. Turns out, they got sloppy and went a bit overboard. What is really disturbing, however, is that the company named, "CQ" is in the business of automating "campaigns" with software and data analysis. To them, it doesn't matter WHAT the campaign actually is as long as they get a paying customer-- smears and disinformation is just another day of work for them. There's so many layers of slime here, it's hard to know where to start.
- acdha 8y ago
  > It isn't intended, I think, as a way to guide policy. Public comment is explicitly intended to guide policy. It’s not a vote but the entire point of the process is to get feedback before a policy is finalized and most agencies attempt to address common points. It’s reasonable to question the inherent assumption of good faith with the current administration but we’re also in an unusual time where the most cynical view of previous administrations are now the smart money view of how things work.
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    Public comment is meant to surface arguments to be taken into account to guide policy. As such, having 1 or 10 million people make the exact same argument in the same words doesn't change anything.
    - acdha 8y ago
      This is only true in the most simple cases. If there’s any portion of a proposed policy which is balancing different interests - which is almost always the case - the ratio of comments is a useful metric because it would surface problems such as e.g. a policy which big companies are comfortable with but hit many small ones with substantial compliance overhead. In this case, having tons of AstroTurf comments allows them to say that there’s public support outside of large ISPs. Given how anticompetitive the decision was, they needed that fig leaf.
      - rayiner 8y ago
        No agency would be on firm footing pointing to a large number of identical form comments received for one side as a factor in a balancing of interests. It would not survive the “reasoned decision making” requirement. To the extent you’re talking about balancing the needs of small and large companies, for example, you’d have to point to concrete examples and data. That could come in comments (small businesses talking about real challenges they’ve faced), but relying on a large number of identical form comments wouldn’t pass muster.

sitkack 8y ago

With so many rotten apples, maybe the tree should go. This is a gigantic, criminal subversion of Democracy that the FCC remains complicit in, something that only jail time can fix.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> something that only jail time can fix Who is violating what law? The entire point of rule of law is pissed off randos, even if there are many of them, don’t merit being put in jail.
- creato 8y ago
  > Duby is one of the 24 people who signed the open letter in May 2017 demanding that her comment be removed by the FCC. Of 14 others who said their names were “used to file comments we did not make,” Gizmodo was able to duplicate the experiment 12 times. 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. (For reasons unclear, two of the signatories’ comments could not be located.) This is alleging that CQ impersonated people to file comments with the FCC. I don't know if this meets the legal requirements to be considered some kind of fraud, but it sure seems like it should.
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    No, it's alleging that CQ submitted those comments. There's no reason to believe based on this article that CQ impersonated people - what's more likely is that they operated websites to gather comments and people submitted false names through there. If you look at the linked WSJ article you'll see there were fake comments on many of the common templates, some associated with pro-NN groups and some against.
    - outsidetheparty 8y ago
      The investigation focuses on a specific anti-NN comment that was submitted, identically worded, hundreds of thousands of times, in alphabetical order by name. That's not "people submitting false names" through a website, it's obviously organized fraud. If you're suggesting that CQ was just the unwitting middleman between the FCC and some other group that was submitting the fraudulent comments through their site, that would have been trivially detectable and filtered out by CQ: > “Before we submit these comments (via the API) we remove any bad or questionable submissions,” he told Gizmodo. “On a technical level, a few of the things we do include running the email address through an email validator, eliminate duplicate records with the same email address, and remove multiple submissions from the same IP address.”

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

Who are prominent clients of CQ Roll Call?

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

This is treason and I don’t see why it would be punished differently.

tvanantwerp 8y ago
But...this isn't treason. Fraud, yes. Definitely fraud. But unless there is some other evidence that this fraud was committed with the specific intent of aiding a foreign power rather than just line the pockets of the telecoms, then no, not treason.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  “the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.” Maybe I’m being a little hyperbolic, it isn’t the government being overthrown but one branch of it and certainly what the public wanted was intentionally silenced.
  - smt88 8y ago
    The Republican Party is the minority party and have most of the power in the US at every level. By definition, most things that they do will be fairly unpopular, and some things they do will be wildly unpopular.
  - jimrandomh 8y ago
    You are being more than a little bit hyperbolic, and it's bad for the conversation when people do that.
  - javagram 8y ago
    Expansive interpretations of "Treason", such as the one you propose, are explicitly prohibited by the US Constitution due to their abuse by european monarchies to silence dissent. "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." Article 3 Section 3. As a result of this strict standard, the last successful prosecution for treason in the USA was in 1952...

1024core 8y ago

Money quote: an FCC spokesperson said comments from the general public are “generally not substantive, so thus have no impact on a rulemaking.” There you have it. So the number of comments is useful only when it helps make whatever point they're trying to make.

rayiner 8y ago
Independent federal agencies are, by design not accountable to public opinion, except indirectly through the election of the President, who appoints commissioners. Agencies are designed to be guided by expert opinions and judgment. The purpose of APA comments, thefore, is not to poll the public. It is to ensure that the agency considers all the relevant “written data, views, or arguments.” 5 USC 553(c). Legally, a rule making cannot be challenged on the basis that it is contrary to the weight of public opinion. It can only be challenged on the basis that the order adopting the rule doesn’t adequately address the “data, views, and arguments” raised in the comments. https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1326&context=olr https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl.... Accordingly, a large number of comments that raise the same views cannot have any impact in the rule making. The soundbite you quoted, therefore, is a completely unremarkable statement about regulatory law. That also makes sense. Regulatory agencies micro-manage businesses to a greater degree than ordinary legislation, including managing prices. When you remove those things from the purview of the market and business judgment, you can’t subject it to the whims of the public. If you had a vote on it, electricity would be free and there would be no money to invest in power plants or the grid. (Now, spamming an agency website with fake comments is a highly problematic action from a systems integrity and computer security point of view, no doubt. That’s a separate issue from the agency’s rule making policy.)
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  Everything you said makes sense and seems accurate, except for one important detail: while the agencies aren't required to consider or obey the weight of public opinion, on issues with significant public interest they ought to voluntarily consider public opinion (even if they choose to reject it). After all, they serve the public despite the indirect accountability, and often there is more than one path which the experts deem viable. Public preference can be an appropriate in choosing among the viable paths. In this situation, when the coordinated fake comments line up with the governing politicians' views, and when both run contrary to the weight of real comments from experts and non-experts alike, it casts doubt on the genuineness of the FCC's good faith in considering even the expert public comments, and therefore on the validity of the rulemaking overall.

mitchbob 8y ago

Faking an identity online for political manipulation should be a felony, full stop.

dec0dedab0de 8y ago
That could end up outlawing Pseudonyms and fictional characters. The real problem is that the government would accept public comment through an unauthenticated web form.

craftinator 8y ago

Paid for by.... Mr. Pai? Follow the money...

virgakwolfw 8y ago

Yet somehow Mazzella and Williams won’t even suffer a scratch in their reputation- let alone real penalties. But somehow, when the IRS audited Conservative non-profit organizations that were skirting political laws- the head of the IRS was called in for questioning and a multitude of investigations started.