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Two million identities stolen for fake net neutrality comments

Deleted member 1287

user requested account closure
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Oct 25, 2017
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As many as 2 million identities were stolen to leave fake comments in support of the FCC's decision to kill net neutrality, according to the New York Attorney General's Office. Based on the 5,000 or so complaints filed with the office, some of the victims are senior citizens, some are minors, while some are already dead. "This is a 13 year old child -- she did not post this comment, nor did anyone else in her household," a report filed by a New Yorker said. A Chicago resident who also filed a complaint called the fake comment made under their mother's name "sickening." Their mother passed away several years ago from cancer.

While it's still not clear how the identities were stolen, the Attorney General's Office has at least figured out where the fake comments came from: New York, Florida, Texas and California produced 100,000 fake comments each. It has released the details of its investigation along with a letter from Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman criticizing the FCC's decision move forward with its net neutrality vote. He's urging the commission to postpone the vote, which is scheduled to take place today at 10:30AM Eastern, and to help further his team's investigation.

He wrote:

"Millions of fake comments have corrupted the FCC public process -- including two million that stole the identities of real people, a crime under New York law. Yet the FCC is moving full steam ahead with a vote based on this corrupted process, while refusing to cooperate with an investigation. As we've told the FCC: moving forward with this vote would make a mockery of our public comment process and reward those who perpetrated this fraud to advance their own hidden agenda. The FCC must postpone this vote and work with us to get to the bottom of what happened."

Schneiderman once called out the FCC for refusing to look into the issue. His office apparently requested for FCC's records nine times between June and November, but it never received any concrete response. Earlier this month, the commission finally agreed to cooperate with the New York Attorney General, giving Schneiderman's team a way to finally start analyzing all the anti-net neutrality spam that flooded the commission's website.
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Check your names folks--yesterday a person in one of my facebook groups also said that there were 3 comments under her name, one was real (opposing the repeal) and 2 were fake, and in support of their nefarious bullshit.

Edit: Website set up by Schneiderman to check if your name appears: https://ag.ny.gov/FakeComments. If you find your name, go back to the search page and click the dark blue box below the search box.

Edit 2: More detailed article from NPR, more at link
As FCC Prepares Net-Neutrality Vote, Study Finds Millions of Fake Comments

The Pew Research Center took a close look at the comments. Associate Director Aaron Smith said several things popped out. Maybe the biggest, 94 percent of the comments "were submitted multiple times, and in some cases those comments were submitted many hundreds of thousands of times."

But this is taking it to a new level. For instance, the names listed in the public comments: Smith said there were a lot of duplicates.
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The top name of those submitting the comments was "The Internet." "The Internet," Smith said, "submitted about 17,000 comments out of the 22 million."

Common names, like John Johnson and John Smith, were each on thousands of comments. And there were others that stood out, including John Oliver, the host of HBO's Last Week with John Oliver, who did a widely viewed segment in favor of net neutrality regulations.
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It's not clear whether the fake comments were submitted by bots, although Pew found that on several occasions, tens of thousands of comments came in at the same precise moment.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said half a million of the fake comments originated from Russian email addresses. She said the issue with the FCC comments calls into question the integrity of the entire public comment process, across the government.
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Last edited:
Occam

Occam

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,510
Ajit Pai doesn't care. He and his cronies are getting paid directly by the lobbyists.
 
36 Chambers

36 Chambers

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,345
Damn homie,

In high school you was the man homie,

Fuck happened to you?

Seriously, America what the fuck is going on over there?
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
Pai probably doesn't care and would've killed it anyway, no matter how many identities were stolen either for or against.
 
Sera

Sera

Member
Oct 27, 2017
698
Melbourne
Whether or not it would have affected Pai's decision, doesn't stop it from being a mass scale of identity theft that is trying to manipulate the narrative of the situation
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

Eating crackers
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
27,511
Cape Cod, MA
Nobody used my name, but I did get a couple of e-mails from my reps yesterday including an out of office one, and I didn't specifically send anything yesterday, which does have me concerned someone spoofed my e-mail address to send them false requests.
 
shnurgleton

shnurgleton

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,864
Boston
Sera said:
Whether or not it would have affected Pai's decision, doesn't stop it from being a mass scale of identity theft that is trying to manipulate the narrative of the situation
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As the Dem FCC chairpeople made clear, this is insanely worrying, archly undemocratic, and should not be ignored

But who cares about the means as long as you achieve your nefarious ends lol
 
Ahasverus

Ahasverus

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,599
Colombia
Rusia again?

I hope the Republicans who are always paranoid of government overreaching take notice it's their government that is causing it.
 
Calabi

Calabi

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,484
Well the corruption is blatant and out in the open now. I feel like this is kind of a test for the US democracy, will they let this fly and embed the corruption.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 1287

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
613
Hmmm, my name is common and these comments are different addresses so maybe not me. But I do see that there are a TON of duplicates, same name, address, and every single one is a message in support, some whining about Obama's "overreach."
 
OutofMana

OutofMana

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,071
California
Searched my name and came up with a bunch of hits. None have my address so I guess my last name isn't as rare as I thought it was. Still, this is infuriating.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 1287

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
613
In 2015, wealthy leftist billionaires and powerful Silicon Valley monopolies took the internet out of the hands of the people and placed it firmly under the thumb of the federal the government, monopolies like Google and global billionaires like George Soros. Not surprisingly, today ObamaÕs new Internet gatekeepers are censoring our viewpoints, banning our online activities and silencing dissenting voices. As Google Chairman Eric Schmidt admitted, ÒWeÕre not arguing for censorship, weÕre arguing just take it off the page...make it harder to find." It took only two years and a green light from Obama for companies like Google and Facebook and their liberal allies like George Soros to take total control of the dominant information and communications platform in the world today. We simply canÕt afford to let ObamaÕs disastrous rules stand. The FCC must stand up for a truly free and open Internet by immediately rolling back his cynical and self-serving Internet takeover. The future of a free and open Internet is at stake.
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lol wat
 
lowmelody

lowmelody

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,101
We are in the midst of an outright kleptocracy that is doing everything it can to enshrine corporatocracy while it has the power to do so. We are truly under attack from the inside and out.

I can only hope that the fallout from this will completely ruin the lives of those responsible.
 
Hayvic

Hayvic

Member
Oct 27, 2017
263
This instance will be adopted by the alt right to call into question legitimate protest next time there is a big upheaval about an issue. Just like "fake news" has been adopted to disparage "liberal" media.
 
Beartruck

Beartruck

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,939
Pai flat out admitted in the hearing that he didn't read the comments and mocked those who submitted, which is certainly a bold strategy. Its like this guy thinks his cocky bullshit wont fuck him over in the inevitable court case.
 
Maximo

Maximo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,162
marc^o^ said:
https://mobile.twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/941467519222771713

Ajit Pai was named FCC chairman by Donald Trump, but who cares about fake news anymore. Thanks Obama.

Infuriating.
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I mean jesus christ its on wikipedia he could have easily googled it, ANYONE COULD
"In January 2017, President Donald Trumpdesignated Pai as FCC Chairman. In March 2017, Trump announced that he would renominate Pai to serve another five-year term (remaining Chairman of the FCC)."
Lying piece of shit.
 
GrizzleBoy

GrizzleBoy

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,762
Found 3 in my name, and my name isn't exactly popular.

Although all comments ts were in favour of net neutrality.
 
Fable

Fable

Member
Oct 25, 2017
204
My last name is a common word and there's about 8 pages of results. Search function seems to be matching more than just name so this is going to take me a while to search my entire family. So far not seeing anything though.
 

Deleted member 3345

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,967
It's really offensive that fajita's response to this is "we, the FC fucking C can't discern and filter out what are fake comments and what are real comments, unrelated we're gonna take charge of how the internet should work!"

Fucking scumbags.
 
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