FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies To Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims: Gizmodo (gizmodo.com) 101
As the FCC was grappling with accusations of a fake cyberattack last spring, it intentionally misled several news organizations, choosing to feed journalists false information, while at the same time discouraging them from challenging the agency's official story, news outlet Gizmodo reported Tuesday. From the report: Internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo lay bare the agency's efforts to counter rife speculation that senior officials manufactured a cyberattack, allegedly to explain away technical problems plaguing the FCC's comment system amid its high-profile collection of public comments on a controversial and since-passed proposal to overturn federal net neutrality rules.
The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurred -- not to the reporters who've requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers who've demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened.
The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurred -- not to the reporters who've requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers who've demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened.
Standard Operating Procedure? (Score:5, Insightful)
This was an administration openly elected to inflict cruelty on those that expected anything meaningful from shared governance.
Fake information to support absurd lies is kind of their "thing".
Outrage SHOULD be expected, but we're being trained to turn off all our mental alarms against everything important we used to care about.
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They are nominated with restrictions
Only three commissioners can be of the same party as the seated "President". The previous President was forced to appoint Pai the shill under that part of the law. Dumpsterfire merely promoted him to the top.
I agree with your main point though. Spewy McShitfountain (Dumpsterfire) didn't select anyone for the good of the country.
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If you keep blaming the president for everything that goes wrong, then you're allowing those who commit the actual misdeeds to go free...
None of this was the president's fault. I can assure you that Donald Trump probably doesn't care about the outcome, no matter which way it goes. It's important to hold those who commit the atrocities accountable for their actions - not just their commanding officers.
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Re:Standard Operating Procedure? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, bad as the actions of the FCC are, they are minor in comparison to the actions of other government agencies. They may affect me more directly, but other improper actions have resulted in people dying. So attention is rightfully paid to other actions.
Re: Standard Operating Procedure? (Score:1)
Re:Serious breach of trust (Score:4, Funny)
First order of business: Is this report true? There need to be an unambiguous case of intentionally misleading the public, exposed by the E-mails and with no reasonable other explanation.
But his emails!
Re:Serious breach of trust (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not specific to the current administration, and in fact there's a move afoot to remove, or "drain", the current situation, or "swamp", of people who abuse the system. Especially of people who abuse the system for political gain.
Was having a bad day, needed that laugh. Trump draining the swamp, rofl, have you seen his appointees? ESPECIALLY of people who abuse it for political gain? You Trump supporters are really living in your own world.
This is a serious breach of trust in government, and while I've generally been giving Ajit Pai a pass because of TDS, this is where we can reasonably be outraged and call for his removal.
Really, this is what did it? The whole net neutrality thing, just TDS? The made up condition where people keep calling Trump on his bullshit instead of letting it go? Anyone who says 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' has no credibility and puts politics ahead of intellectual honesty.
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A Weak and Dubious Attempt (Score:5, Insightful)
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Interesting that you would claim we need to get more support in Congress then lambast the only method by which that is possible to accomplish.
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We know who they mean (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, the Fox tabloid was complicit in this sham. What a surprise. This is the same group who is furiously backpedaling when they put out a picture of a Philadelphia Eagle's player kneeling [cnn.com], but used the picture for a story about players kneeling for the anthem. The player is a Christian and was doing a pre-game prayer. He even called them out for their propaganda.
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Yup. Fox New actually apologized for their error on this one.
They weren't sorry they did it, they were just sorry they got caught.
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Kinda like the NYT and CNN pushing a story of immigrant kids in cages using a picture from the Obama days, eh?
This picture used in place of 1500 kids we can't find.
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While all you wrote is true, it is very misleading, to the point of creating a false conclusion. The Washington post has a fuller story. [washingtonpost.com]
TLDR Under Obama, it was mostly that the families knew where the kids were (with family, false information on location given to the government,) not the government. Under Trump, the families do not know where the kids are as Sessions like it that way.
A judicial ruling in 2015 caused the issue during Obama's presidency. He tried to get a bill passed, that republicans ref
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> Trump era most are not going to families, and the families do not know where their kids are.
I was incorrect on this, they are still required to try and place the kids with families, I have nothing to show the lost kids are not being placed with families today..
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And to be fair, the numbers I gave although correct, are also misleading because the pools were of dissimilar size. The non-response rate was similar (within a few percent) under both administrations. It's a brouhaha in a teakettle, and impugns
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Point is, it's a valid example of media bias. And they're in no way "lost kids," rather cases where the people they were placed with didn't respond when contacted. That characterization legitimizes Trump's claims of "fake news," because it's deliberately misleading.
Does anyone know where they are? If not, they're effectively "lost", right? Non-response is not an excuse.
The mainstream media seemed much more fair and balanced when it was only a few TV networks doing an hour a day, a few weekly magazines covering issues in more depth, and a daily newspaper.
The reason was due to the FCC Fairness Doctrine, removed under Reagan. If the FCC truly wanted to serve the people, they'd reinstate this one ruling, and all "news" would actually be news instead of one-sided editorialized opinions.
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When will the government step in and start controlling these news outlets, eh? Some uncorruptible benevolent commission whose mission is to regulate communication. We'll call it the Federal Communications Commission! They'll solve the problem!
"Any problem caused by a tank can be solved by a tank." -- Peter Griffin and Every Liberal Ever.
Colons in headlines (Score:5, Informative)
Once again, msmash, you're doing it wrong. The person saying the thing goes before the colon, and what they're saying goes after.
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Once again, msmash, you're doing it wrong. The person saying the thing goes before the colon, and what they're saying goes after.
Except when what they're saying comes out of it.
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In headlines, colons are often used instead of attributive verbs (e.g., "says") to save space.
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Once again, msmash, you're doing it wrong. The person saying the thing goes before the colon, and what they're saying goes after.
Informative? Dudes, this is just flat out funny (if ya know even a little human anatomy)!
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In this case I think a comma would have made more sense.
"Capitalization and colons are what the cool kids use, claims msmash"
Holy Shit! (Score:4, Insightful)
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I wonder how many people in Russia actually voluntarily chose Pravda as their source of truth and used its content in arguments in others. Not people in power, just regular people.
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I wonder how many people in Russia actually voluntarily chose Pravda as their source of truth and used its content in arguments in others. Not people in power, just regular people.
Well... You know their slogan: "Pravda: Overwhelmingly chosen as the source of Truth by regular people - who don't want to get shot by their Government."
Re:Holy Shit! (Score:4, Informative)
"Pravda and Izvestia, meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular saying was "there's no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia""
from Wikipedia, but I learned that in Russian class in 1986 (I don't remember much else)
The only attack was forged comments (Score:1)
And those were provided by their own operatives, so they can't pretend they didn't know about them.
Nothing will come of this until (Score:2)
Media outlets keep reporting on this cover-up, but nothing will happen until congress starts an investigation on it. Now is really a good time for that, since congress is looking to overturn the network neutrality regulation and there are already investigations going on into FCC staffer behavior.
More incompetence than conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that the issue is more a combination of incompetence and wishful thinking than it is an FCC conspiracy.
John Oliver asks his viewers to go to the FCC site and post comments supporting net neutrality. To a less-competent sysadmin, that surge of traffic may look like a DDoS. He mentions the possibility and it percolates up to guys like Pai. Pai is thrilled that there is a malicious, technical explanation for this event, because it allows him to dismiss the notion that a significant proportion of people may support net neutrality. Public support for NN doesn't fit within Pai's pre-constructed worldview, so he's more comfortable not facing that possibility.
Bots abuse the FCC comment API to manufacture millions of fake comments against NN. At the time the attack was ongoing, I happened to be looking at the FCC page, trying to make a comment of my own, and I watched the automated comments pouring in. They were coming in at multiple comments per second, all with identical text, and in alphabetical order by the name of the commentor. It was blindingly obvious that someone had just set up a script that created comments from a database of names and addresses. But Pai refuses to investigate, insisting that all of those comments are obviously legitimate. Of course all those comments are real, because they support his pre-constructed worldview. It just makes sense to him.
And after all the incompetence and confirmation bias, after publicly stating a bunch of things that turned out to be bullshit, they don't want to investigate, they don't want anyone else to investigate, and they don't want to provide any information. Because the results will make them look either partisan or stupid. And we'll tolerate a certain amount of either of those things, but there's a chance this would go too far.
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It seems to me that the issue is more a combination of incompetence and wishful thinking than it is an FCC conspiracy.
Can't it be all three?
And after all the incompetence and confirmation bias, after publicly stating a bunch of things that turned out to be bullshit, they don't want to investigate, they don't want anyone else to investigate, and they don't want to provide any information. Because the results will make them look either partisan or stupid.
Again, can't it be both, and add on top of that a cover-up (conspiracy) etc to give the legal hounds something to really go after? I mean, Ajit Pai in jail would be true justice, given how hard he's trying to defraud the American people.
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Oh, certainly. It's my opinion that Ajit Pai and his pals are both partisan and stupid. (Which works okay if they do it secretly and have passable excuses.) Their behavior also makes them *look* partisan and stupid to an extent that may be beyond acceptable levels. I think t
Re:More incompetence than conspiracy (Score:4, Insightful)
I happen to believe that Conspiracy to Regulatory Capture of a Federal Agency should be a Capital Treason offense for all parties involved. Shame that law will never be passed.
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The Constitution limits treason to acts of war and assisting foreign enemies, so I'd just make it a capital offense as a type of terrorism.
I propose firing squad by robots. It is the most humane way.
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But have they committed a crime? I have absolutely no idea. If they have, then I think it should be investigated and we should throw the book at them. But from my naive perspective, it looks like they're just "being shitty" which isn't really a crime.
It's the cover-up that's worse than the "crime". Cover-ups are almost always criminal in some form. I'd agree they're openly being asshats, but short of proof of bribery or some form of kick-back, there's little real crime going on. Violation of the trust placed in them taking the offices they hold? Absolutely. Still not a crime. Which is why the cover-up is the best route to getting Pai in jail. Getting him to state things under oath would be the most likely route, I doubt he can keep all his lies straight
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A Cyber attack is so obvious here /s (Score:2)
What a difference an agency head makes. (Score:1)
Tom Wheeler was a telcom lobbyist before becoming FCC head. Ajit Pai was a telcom lobbyist before becoming FCC head. Under the former, the agency worked for the consumer (to the chagrin of Wheeler's previous employers). Under the latter, it's a crooked clown show. The majority of its work force will be the same. How do they manage going home after a day of not doing the job they are paid for and stealing wages from the public as their employer while doing worse than nothing in return?
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Maybe politicians aren't all the same after all, maybe it does matter which side they chose.
Hasn't the country had enough of this shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So far all the military leaders are still real military leaders, following real military law that requires they serve the United States.
And I hate to say it, but so far Justice Gorsuch has not been the right wing nutcase the Republicans wanted, but rather a principled Textualist who rules without regard to politics.
And he did appoint a few mainstream Republicans who are more honest, but they all quit already. Who would work for him who is honest and competent?
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You don't get news on your planet, eh?