How A Lobbying Firm May Have Submitted Fake FCC Comments (gizmodo.com) 44
Remember when dozens of Americans said their names were used for fake comments sent to America's FCC opposing net neutrality?
Now Gizmodo's taken a hard look at their past interviews with Dan Germain, the CTO of a company that helps lobbyists construct digital "grassroots" campaigns -- and at the conservative nonprofit Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF). Attempting to confirm or disprove the alleged link between CQ and CFIF, Gizmodo initiated its own review of the API data logs last week, focusing on comments from dozens of people who claim they were impersonated online.... [T]imestamps contained in the API logs reveal an unmistakable correlation between the use of CQ's API key and numerous identical comments containing CFIF's text... By comparing the API logs to comment data that the FCC had already made publicly available, Gizmodo found more than a dozen comments containing CFIF's boilerplate language... 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...
Prior to CQ becoming a subject of interest in an ongoing criminal investigation, Germain explained at length that his company had created a platform specifically to direct comments to the FCC and that it had been operational since at least 2016.... Whereas many of the groups responsible for uploading millions of comments requested only one or two API keys, logs show that CQ, over a period of several months, requested no fewer than 114.
The article notes that identical comments using language from CFIF "are now suspected of having been uploaded using CQ's software" -- and that they were submitted to the FCC "several hundred thousand times."
Now Gizmodo's taken a hard look at their past interviews with Dan Germain, the CTO of a company that helps lobbyists construct digital "grassroots" campaigns -- and at the conservative nonprofit Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF). Attempting to confirm or disprove the alleged link between CQ and CFIF, Gizmodo initiated its own review of the API data logs last week, focusing on comments from dozens of people who claim they were impersonated online.... [T]imestamps contained in the API logs reveal an unmistakable correlation between the use of CQ's API key and numerous identical comments containing CFIF's text... By comparing the API logs to comment data that the FCC had already made publicly available, Gizmodo found more than a dozen comments containing CFIF's boilerplate language... 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...
Prior to CQ becoming a subject of interest in an ongoing criminal investigation, Germain explained at length that his company had created a platform specifically to direct comments to the FCC and that it had been operational since at least 2016.... Whereas many of the groups responsible for uploading millions of comments requested only one or two API keys, logs show that CQ, over a period of several months, requested no fewer than 114.
The article notes that identical comments using language from CFIF "are now suspected of having been uploaded using CQ's software" -- and that they were submitted to the FCC "several hundred thousand times."
Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread (Score:5, Insightful)
So once again, is this gonna change how anyone vote? I haven't gotten a single "Yeah" to day....
Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread (Score:1)
I vote for politicians who believe in NN. It's all we can do. That and try to share our concerns with our political neighbors hoping they see the light.
You can show a horse water, you can't make them drink it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How can you tell? Most (relatively honest) evaluation sites find most even mildly controversial statements by any politician of any stripe are lies. Some, admittedly, more blatant and unashamed than others.
You vote for the ones that say they do (Score:2)
Also, we need to get a majority in favor of NN. Right now some of the wishy-washy guys and gals can safely say they support it _and_ vote for it while lying through their teeth because the current Congress (the Senate in particular) opposes NN as a burdensome regulation. You see this a lot with Susan Collins where she takes populist stances when it's safe and falls in line behind Mitch McConnel (the defacto head of the
Re: (Score:2)
That's not gonna be true (Score:2)
The odds of somebody who doesn't give a rat's behind about NN coming to
Re: That's not gonna be true (Score:1)
They were talking about the voting public in general. Not a bunch of ingrown slashbots like yourself.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This political fact checker [nytimes.com] agrees that all politicians lie at least some of the time, but that a small number of politicians still tell the truth most of the time.
Do you have a survey in mind that found that "most even mildly controversial statements by any politician of any stripe are lies"?
Re: (Score:2)
No. Merely personal observation and history. And a few responses from writing to a legislator. So I guess I should have said, "In my experience most controversial statements by any politican are lies", as that was more precisely what I meant.
That said, are you really sure you want to trust the New York times on this matter? They *might* be honest. They *might* have checked things in a even-handed way. But they sure don't always do so.
All that said, I'll generally vote for someone who promotes statemen
Thanks, (Score:2)
Re: Oh goody, a Net Neutrality thread (Score:4, Insightful)
So many scandals from this administration and still blin support from Fox news and Republicans during the Cohen hearings. Don't think this one will change a trump loyalist mind
It may not change many people's votes... (Score:3, Informative)
But it's still good to get a record of the shenanigans out in the open, if only to force the cheaters to do more work to find a different approach next time.
And who knows, it just may give some voters pause, come 2020. For a somewhat similar example on the other side: I know that news of Elizabeth Warren's various shenanigans regarding her heritage have largely soured me on her candidacy for president in 2020. If, miraculously, some reasonably honest middle-of-the-road Republican ended up being the presiden
Re: (Score:2)
What this really does is point out Lobbyists, PR Agencies, Marketers are everywhere, bullshit in evry forum. By far the majority of fanbois who attack negative reviews of any kind, paid trolls with hundreds of accounts out of those firms. Any time people start defending crap out of corporations, they are paid and that one person ain't one person but a person pretending to be hundreds of people online. When the corporate defence sounds like bullshit, that is because it is bullshit, end to end bullshit.
Googl
Re: (Score:2)
I do like shenanigans out in the open. It doesn't stop them but at least a few voters will admit the truth when it smacks them in the face,
But I'm a bit confused about your Warren comment. As far as I know, the sequence is: she believed that she had a native american ancestor some generations ago. She put this down on a staff information form. She never got any benefit from this. When she was challenged on it, she took a DNA test and found that she had a native american ancestor some generations ago.
First contender for Straw Man of 2019 Award (Score:3)
I'm relieved that you trotted it out. With many of us having a financial incentive to create a political divide on what has historically been more of a technical issue, it's heartening to know that we have such a reliable trope. "Is ____ opinion on ____ going to change how anyone votes?" is flexible enough that we can use it on a range of issues. Net neutrality, race, equality, climate change, livable wage... it d
Everything is politics (Score:3)
This is an issue that should be critical to anyone in tech. I know defense contractor guys who don't vote for Democrats because they're almost guaranteed to cut funding to the companies they work for. This is like that.
If you're in IT practically everything you do depends on NN in one form or another. Like it or not most if not all of us are where we are today because of a free and open internet, which can't survive w/o NN.
My point is that a
Probably not, but is that a bad thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can trot out my usual question: is this gonna change how anyone votes? Seriously, is it?
It depends what you mean by “changing how people vote”. If you meant “abruptly switching to the other side”, then the answer is likely negative. After all, suppose that you’d just read the opposite news: some questionable company helped manipulate things, hoping to make your side win. Would you automatically change your vote in favour of the opposite side? I wouldn’t.
Sure, such affair would leave a foul taste in my mouth and I’d want things to improve. Yes, if my elected officials were directly implicated, I’d certainly consider possible (and sensible) alternatives with the same general alignment (but alternatives are often scarce or inexistent), while retaining some amount of pragmatism. Setting aside the mindset of radical one-issue voters, there are many concerns to simultaneously consider, and compromises to be made, when casting a vote. So, I don’t find it shocking that the answer to your question is, in all likelihood, “no”.
That being said, as long as it is covered in the media and talked about, this kind of abuse can have some small but lasting and compounding impact. Of course, one can dream that citizens would forcefully communicate their disapprobation to their elected representative, in an attempt to stimulate positive change (such as passing laws instituting penalties for such corrupt practice, and ensuring that those laws are properly enforced). But even in a fairly passive society, after abuses have occurred repeatedly, popular indignation will indeed begin to influence poll results.
Unfortunately, mounting exasperation can lead to people haphazardly jumping from one extreme to another (or even abandoning moderation to embrace an extreme), and that has rarely been a good thing. As recent (and no-so-recent) history has all too well illustrated in a number of countries, years of unbridled corruption can drive despairing people to enthusiastically vote for the worst demagogic scumbag who’s promised to “clean house” by any means.
In short, I prefer to hope that this type of news does not directly change the way people vote, but that it helps shape people’s perception and change the way people talk about political issues and about the process by which political decisions are made. And I do hope that we get laws and enforcement that puts perpetrators of such stunt (as well as their complicit beneficiaries) behind bars for a dissuasive length of time.
Re: (Score:2)
And /. is a fairly well educated bunch, so we also know that our voting choices got us here.
Can't argue with there... but if we were intelligent and logical (there are too many who are merely "educated" and nothing more), we might know that the voting decisions of the masses are 'well-contained' by our two-faced, one-party system . Vive La Difference... only there really isn't one.
Re: (Score:2)
Identity theft and possibly slander (admittedly a tort and not a crime). Slander because someone's reputation is at stake if they were perceived to be stopping something that they wouldn't be caught dead supporting. Nobody is going to pay for this or even face a minor wrist slap. But at least the truth could finally be out and maybe prevent further disinformation.
Undermining Democracy (Score:4, Interesting)
Attacking representative democracy's ability to function should be a treason class crime. Tampering with elections being obvious, but feedback systems for regulatory boards are also representatives and should also be included.
THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks... (Score:2)
Ah come on folks, everybody knows that the comment process used by the FCC isn't some vote counter. It's for providing unique information to the FCC about the topic. The public can comment, but in reality these comments mean little or nothing and are rarely even reviewed.
When you submit some "form letter" kind of comment, they may notice that somebody else was interested enough to post a form letter, but if you think some poor hapless bureaucrat in DC actually READS all these, you are sadly mistaken.
So
Re: (Score:2)
Net neutrality is under attack by unethical conservatives, it is not dead. Are you an unethical conservative or just a surrender monkey?
Re: THIS, AGAIN? It's pointless folks... (Score:1)
Are you a partisan hack or just a troll?
Re: (Score:2)
If you are pushing this on the FCC's public comment system, knock yourself out. Literally NOTHING you can say will matter and the more you repeat yourself, even if you use alternative ID's the less it actually will matter.
The public comment system is designed to get information from the public, so if your repeated posting doesn't contain some kind of new or novel information of use to the FCC's regulatory decisions, you are wasting your time. Nobody at the FCC is reading automated posts and form letters