Judge Orders FCC to Hand Over IP Addresses Linked to Fake Net Neutrality Comments (gizmodo.com) 70
Before it rolled back net neutrality protections in 2017, America's Federal Communications Commission requested public comments online. But they're still facing criticism over how they handled them, Gizmodo reports:
A Manhattan federal judge has ruled the Federal Communications Commission must provide two reporters access to server logs that may provide new insight into the allegations of fraud stemming from agency's 2017 net neutrality rollback.... The logs will show, among other details, the originating IP addresses behind the millions of public comments sent to the agency ahead of the December 2017 net neutrality vote.
The FCC attempted to quash the paper's request but failed to persuade District Judge Lorna Schofield, who wrote that, despite the privacy concerns raised by the agency, releasing the logs may help clarify whether fraudulent activity interfered with the comment period, as well as whether the agency's decision-making process is "vulnerable to corruption... In this case, the public interest in disclosure is great because the importance of the comment process to agency rulemaking is great," she said, adding: "If genuine public comment is drowned out by a fraudulent facsimile, then the notice-and-comment process has failed."
The FCC attempted to quash the paper's request but failed to persuade District Judge Lorna Schofield, who wrote that, despite the privacy concerns raised by the agency, releasing the logs may help clarify whether fraudulent activity interfered with the comment period, as well as whether the agency's decision-making process is "vulnerable to corruption... In this case, the public interest in disclosure is great because the importance of the comment process to agency rulemaking is great," she said, adding: "If genuine public comment is drowned out by a fraudulent facsimile, then the notice-and-comment process has failed."
Re: Well this should be good (Score:4, Insightful)
So you believe it is better to have only the FCC have access to the server logs? Vs FCC + a select few reporters.
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One side having the total say about what really happens means that you don't know what happened. So your take is that no one should know what's up with those comments. Right?
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Everyone knows that government transparency only applies to officials from the party you don't like.
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I believe it doesn't even matter because the comments aren't used for anything and anyone can pull up a Russian proxy to spam nonsense from.
They're looking for novel arguments, not public support. So this entire thing has been a sham to begin with.
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Bots? Why would any unbiased, sane human reject net neutrality?
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Are you stupid, or do you just play one on the Internet? The laws were already in place. This is about revoking those net neutrality laws. This isn't about creating new laws.
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..and those laws, that were already in place, were criticized here on slashdot, because they were written by AT&T, and didnt do what the name on the tin said they did.
That is simply not true. Do a search for the word "throttling" and limit your search to 2009 and prior (net neutrality passed in 2010) or here, i've done it for you https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com] THEN do the same search and look for articles that are after the law passed.
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As User #848971 showed, you are full of shit. Go back to russia, you damned troll
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The NN regulation was technically in force for a few months.
No major ISP was ever actually in compliance.
Exactly. Like mandating civility (Score:1)
Precisely. Net neutrality is a set of general ideas, much like charity, honesty, and civility. They are generally good ideas.
The size of a queue in a router is a very specific thing.
The metrics uses to pick which route to use for a specific flow are very specific. The math on whether to it's best to drop a packet or queue it when the queue is large is again very specific math. These are the specifics that implement some very general ideas of "fairness" that people call NN.
Having an idea of a general goa
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Because Net Neutrality only treats the symptom of a monopolistic industry and may dampen political support for a proper, monopoly-busting cure.
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You think anything of that sort can be done when "let large companies do what they want" GOP is in control of the Senate?
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Bots? Why would any unbiased, sane human reject net neutrality?
Because some people might make more money without net neutrality.
Because some business offerings might not occur or might take more time to occur with net neutrality. Or such business offerings might require governmental or collective community collaboration and encouragement with net neutrality.
Net neutrality is arguably more fair to more people. However, there will be winners and losers in an economic sense, and the perceived economic potential will steer business decisions.
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I would argue that those corporations, which relied on the government's power of imminent domain (taking of private property for the public good) to take private property for the purpose of creating their networks, must in turn be regulated by the government to insure that their networks are being operated for the public good.
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That is so much bullshit. These fucking giant soul sucking corporations write actual laws preventing legal competition from local municipalities trying to build their own coop broadband and divide the country up into slices by not competing in them. That's why TimeWarner RoadRunner cable modems did not operate in Comcast areas, and vice versa for most of 1990s and 2000s.
Why the fuck shouldn't they be regulated?
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ALEC, one of GOP's favorites writes the damn laws, and then GOP pushes them, usually unchanged. You can quibble over how it is the legislators who introduce and vote on the, but face it, ALEC *WRITES THE DAMN LAWS* that are submitted unchanged by the GOP into state legislature.
From the article:
First, ALEC model bills are, word-for-word, introduced in our state legislatures at a non-trivial rate. Second, they have a good chance – better than most legislation – of being enacted into law. Finally, the bills that pass are most often linked to controversial social and economic issues.
https://www.brookings.edu/arti... [brookings.edu]
https://www.theatlantic.com/po... [theatlantic.com]
https://prospect.org/power/ale... [prospect.org]
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Greed.
Re: Well this should be good (Score:2)
The problem, as always, was ignorance.
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Can't wait to see how many dots get connected right back to folks at the FCC and/or certain commercial entities.
Tagged "rigged".
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I'm sure there were some bots in there
Yes, like this dead one [cnn.com].
if reporters end up getting anything they should just make it public so we could all validate (or refute) whatever is said.
That is one of the jobs of a free press. To expose to public scrutiny what they find.
Are you done trolling?
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a few million IP addresses?
More like ten or twenty IP adresses...
Anyway, the FCC serves Trump. Let's see what the courts can get out of him. Their luck hasn't been very good so far
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Some? 90% of the comments were automated. I saw my own name in there twice promoting AT&T's bullshit agenda, along with my actual comment rooting for net neutrality. Many associates saw the same.
Re: Well this should be good (Score:2)
Some reporters also have expertise in IT, Brian Krebs for example (he is also an investigative journalist). The two aren't mutually exclusive. You're generalizing here.
Umm (Score:2)
This is literally every micropenis-wielding dictator's fantasy.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Informative)
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He has so addled your brain that you can no longer comprehend the literal meaning of the word "fake."
*ROFL*
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These are public comments. They're intended to be PUBLIC record.
Lesson learned (Score:1)
Do not keep server logs
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Is there an obligation to keep logs for three years (or more)?
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Regardless of whether they are turned over or not, I wouldn't trust any data given by the alleged administration.
It's interesting, don't you think? (Score:5, Informative)
Note how the government is so worried about people's privacy when it comes finding out if they actually commented on net neutrality, while on the other hand the government is working hard to force tech companies to stop using encryption so the government can invade people's privacy.
Actually, no, it's not interesting. It's symptomatic of this administration which has gone out of its way [thehill.com] to hide its corruption at every step [nbcnews.com].
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In fairness, "privacy is only good only when it benefits us" has been a growing government mantra for decades, it's hardly fair to lay it at the feet of the current administration.
Fake Fraudulent Activity (Score:3)
What I expect this to show is that the FCC's claim of fraudulent comments is fake. They just used the claim to disregard millions of real comments. If the data shows that most comments came from different IP addresses, it will show that the government simply lied about the process and ignored the public. Now I'm sure there were some scripted comments, but it should be simple to strip those out and still see what the real comments were.
Re: Fake Fraudulent Activity (Score:2)
There were millions of comments with the exact same text submitted supporting the FCC removing net neutrality regulation. There was a website that would let you look up names that commented and what the comment was. Hell, my mom's name was on one of those comments and she didn't even known the FCC was asking for comments.
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Yet another reason I'm voting Blue this election (Score:2)
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Re: Democrats are no better (Score:2)
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Net Neutrality (Score:3)
I understood that when the FCC stepped out of Net Neutrality the FTC would step in [fcc.gov]
The Federal Trade Commission will police and take action against Internet service providers for anticompetitive acts or unfair and deceptive practices. The FTC is the nation's premier consumer protection agency, and until the FCC stripped it of jurisdiction over Internet service providers in 2015, the FTC protected consumers consistently across the Internet economy.
Then everyone got excited when it looked like the FTC refused to enforce what activists consider "Net Neutrality" [vice.com]:
"The FTC is, principally, a law enforcement agency. It is not a sector regulator like the FCC," Simons said during his remarks, adding that things like "blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization would not be per se antitrust violations.”
In his speech Simons conflated “paid prioritization”—the act of letting a company buy a speed or latency advantage from ISPs—with practices like clipping coupons, cheaper matinee movie tickets, and happy hour drink specials. The implication is that his agency is likely view such behavior favorably.
Most people think a company paying for better service is OK, they take issue with their service being cut back (priority mail is fine, as long as it doesn't delay my first class letter) - the FTC still views blocking and slowing traffic without notice to be a violation of law [vice.com]:
“We could take action against ISPs if they block applications without adequately disclosing those practices or mislead consumers about what applications they block or how,” Simons said.
Is this all really about paid prioritization? That really seems to be the only issue from Net Neutrality not picked up by the FTC.
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Why is paying for better service bad? If a Netflix or an Amazon wants to pay for better service, how does that harm other traffic?
I pay a fee to Netflix for their service, in turn Netflix pays the ISP to make sure my streaming service is good. Where have Netflix or I harmed the startup streaming service?
It seems to me we are trying to contort the market to account for the last-mile monopolies that exist - why not work on eliminating the local monopolies? That is controlled by local (city state) regulators,
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If you pay extra to get a better streaming experience from Netflix and Amazon, while they are also paying the ISP to guarantee a better streaming experience for their customers it's called double dipping.
If I have a 100/100 connection, I expect that I will have a 100/100 connection regardless which service I decide to use on the internet. If my ISP suddenly want more money to guarantee that I can use a service of my choice it's just plain greed and rent-seeking for something they already got paid for.
Imagin
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If you pay extra to get a better streaming experience from Netflix and Amazon, while they are also paying the ISP to guarantee a better streaming experience for their customers it's called double dipping.
No, I pay Netflix, Netflix pays ISP, I get better service.
The payment could include a high-speed dedicated connection to feed Netflix traffic into ISPs network, either provided by Netflix (and no money changes hands) or by ISP and Netflix subsidizes it. It could also be a Netflix-owned server in ISP head office,feeding content to Netflix subscribers.
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That's an opinion, nothing more.
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"Most people think a company paying for better service is OK, they take issue with their service being cut back"
There is no difference since capacity is finite.
What the suspicion is.... (Score:2)
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It wouldn't have mattered what cable companies did. The FCC is now so corrupt like the rest of the alleged administration that they would have simply lied about the results.
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This is the end result of all regulation. Eventual Capture. Not a question of if... just a question of when. Since we let congress get away with everything while only bitching as a President nothing changes.
Every nation gets the government it "DESERVES".... especially people that live in a democracy!
The call... (Score:1)
Found it! (Score:1)
not just about slowing traffic (Score:1)