FCC Admits it Lied About Hacking Claims

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When Trump appointed Ajit Pai to Chairman of the FCC, many in technology became visibly nervous. The Republican Party has not been in favor of internet freedom, and Trump just appointed a former Verizon lawyer to head the FCC. Things looked dark for the freedom of the internet. Amid online circles of tech geeks and journalists, worried comments of apprehension flourished.

Our concerns proved right when the FCC said it would vote to abolish the Title II protections of the internet, which define internet service as a service and entitle it to the same protection that other services—such as telephone service—receive. That is, service providers could not give priority to some web traffic over others traffic for pay or other business reasons. AT&T couldn’t block their subscribers from seeing Verizon websites, and Comcast couldn’t slow Netflix down so you’re more interested in getting cable service or Hulu. Companies also couldn’t charge more for “fast lanes,” forcing mom-and-pop shops who can’t pay the exorbitant fees for an internet “fast lane” out of business. The FCC voted to allow this greedy behavior.

The Comment Phase

The FCC allows comments from the public on matters on their website, opening the floodgates. After a John Oliver segment (above), showed the importance of net neutrality to non-techies, millions rushed to the FCC’s website to tell the FCC to protect the internet. So many people went to comment at once that the FCC’s website went down. It received a record number of comments in an extremely short amount of time. The support for net neutrality was literally overwhelming, and the site went down.

Rather than admit that their plan to gut net neutrality was so unpopular that their servers couldn’t handle the waves of disgust and putrid rage constituents hurled at them, they claimed unnamed groups hacked the FCC servers. They also claimed that the comments in favor of net neutrality were mostly fake, echoing Trump’s “3 million fake voters” claim, which Trump has been (and will forever be) incapable of proving true. The FCC claimed their plan wasn’t as unpopular as it seems.

They finally admitted they lied.

The Lie, The “Hack”

On May 7th, 2017, as a result of John Oliver’s segment on net neutrality, the FCC website crashed. The servers couldn’t handle millions of furious Americans rushing to tell the FCC to protect internet freedom and free speech, net neutrality. Rather than admit that their plan was unpopular, the FCC announced it was hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. A DDoS attack is a simple internet-based attack. It involves flooding a server with junk information. A number of people (or a botnet) target a website and send thousands of garbage requests. The servers are unable to handle the requests, and go down. No one attacked the FCC. It just wasn’t prepared for so many people being frustrated with them. The government organization should have been better prepared, this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Commenters took down the FCC website the last time the FCC was considering whether or not to protect net neutrality, in 2014. The FCC under Obama made a much different decision. It listened to the will of the people, it listened to technology experts, and it listened to business owners, both small and large. Obama appointee Tom Wheeler protected net neutrality; no large corporations could control the internet for financial gain. However, under Trump, the opposite happened. The FCC listened only to the largest internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast, and destroyed net neutrality. Internet service providers could exploit the internet for their own gain, limiting transmissions and providing fast lanes as they saw fit.

Finger Pointing?

Ajit Pai refused to address this issue for months. However, after internal email leaks and the FCC inspector general admitted that their systems were not actually hit with a DDoS attack, Ajit finally responded… by blaming an Obama appointee. After months of refusing to address the obvious nature of the lie he helped perpetuate, months of ignoring emails proving the FCC lied about their DDoS claims, and questioning from senators and constituents alike, Ajit Pai passed the buck. Going along with a lie still makes you an accessory to the lie. While Ajit Pai may not have investigated the matter personally, the fact that he allowed the lie to perpetuate and refused to admit wrongdoing under his oversight, Pai became an accomplice. At the bare minimum, Ajit Pai knew the attack was a hoax a full day before taking it public. However, it seems obvious he knew long before that.

“What we don’t know, and what the FCC needs to clear up, is when they knew that they were lying to Congress and the public about it.”

-House Rep. Debbie Dingell (D)

Ajit Pai knew in 2017 that the FCC was not targeted in a DDoS attack. It’s only now, after the inspector general officially announced that the FCC’s previous claims were not true, that Pai took issue with the previous statements. When the lie benefited Pai, he was on board with it, he didn’t publicly scrutinize it, and he didn’t attempt to verify it. When it no longer served him politically, he distanced himself from the person who made the original claim.

No honor among thieves, I suppose.

The FCC Killed Net Neutrality

Despite enough U.S. citizens flooding the FCC with comments to bring down the website, begging them to protect net neutrality, the open web, internet freedom, and freedom of speech, the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality in December of 2017. That went into effect this summer, and we’re waiting for the backlash. The last time net neutrality lapsed, Comcast was quick to begin gouging Netflix, slowing the service to a crawl and demanding payment to bring it back up to speed. It’s more likely that ISPs will try more indirect encroachments on net neutrality, fast lanes and subtle changes, like zero rating on data limits. All of these measures make it impossible for small businesses to compete with larger corporations, who are able to pay for fast lanes and zero rating.

Can we Save the Internet?

Under the Trump administration, this looks bleak. Trump seems happy with Ajit Pai’s performance, and nearly all Republicans have sided with the large internet service providers. Democrats, small internet service providers, tech giants, tech startups, and the American people might not be happy, but the lobbyists for Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast couldn’t be happier. The fabled “Blue Wave 2018” could help introduce legislation to protect net neutrality, but only if Democrats miraculously manage to get control of both the house and the senate. Trump would still have veto power over any law, making net neutrality unlikely until 2020.

“The American people and Congress were lied to for over a year by the FCC, all the way through the public comment process leading to the elimination of the net neutrality rules. That’s simply unacceptable, and we now need to know why the FCC did not come forward with the truth sooner.”

– House Rep. Frank Pallone (D)

These large corporations got what they want: control over the internet. For most people, the internet is their primary means of getting entertainment and news. They want to keep Republicans in power. A free and open internet is vital in a democracy, as is freedom of the press. As Republicans attack the free and open internet, voting rights protections, and even the press itself, the very bedrock of this nation is being attacked. Democracy is under siege from many angles, both domestically and internationally, and its attackers are winning.

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Sources:

• Dell Cameron, Gizmodo, (2), (3)
• Devin Coldewey, TechCrunch
• Glenn Fleishman, Fortune