Writer’s name among fake Net comments
USA TODAY’s Baig among millions of bogus comments submitted to FCC
Of the record 23 million comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission on the contentious issue of Net neutrality — or whether to repeal rules that prevent Internet providers from blocking or throttling content — millions were faked or used stolen identities.
One of those was USA TODAY columnist Edward Baig.
Baig, who co-wrote this piece, dis- covered that his name was among those used to submit such fake comments when reporting on Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to stall the vote on Net neutrality, via a site established by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Those weren’t his. How could that have happened?
Doing this type of comment-stuffing would be neither expensive nor techno- logically difficult, said Benjamin Dean, a technology fellow at the non-partisan Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington D.C.
The first task would be getting a list of names, email addresses and postal addresses. Such lists are readily available for sale on the Dark Web, the underground, hidden portion of the Internet that’s only available through specialized browsers. It’s not really a single entity but instead thousands of sites
where it’s possible to find stolen information and illegal items sold and traded. Such data sets are cheap, especially because to comment on the FCC site all that was necessary was a name, email address and postal address.
“If a credit card is attached to that information it is more expensive,” but that’s not required on the FCC site, Dean says.
Dean adds that it might also be possible to generate names randomly and use them to fill in the comment pages.
“Some of them have got email addresses without the @ sign, and there are a lot of John Johnsons, for example,” he said.
Another possibility would be to go to other FCC comment page or another public page and write a simple program that would collect names and addresses and then create a database with them and use that to generate new comments on the Net neutrality comment page.
A quick perusal of some of the comments that have been identified as fake make it appear as if several different databases and methods were used to gather or create the information needed to fill in the comment page. However, whether the work was done by one individual or group or multiple people isn’t known.
Schneiderman has called the public comments process “deeply corrupted.”
The false entry entered in Baig’s name blamed the Obama administration for “smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation” and was apparently submitted to the FCC last May. The language used in Baig’s comments mirrored fake submissions made in the name of other people whose identities were also stolen and misused.
But bogus comments have been submitted on behalf of people on both sides of the contentious Net neutrality debate.
The false entry entered in USA TODAY columnist Edward Baig’s name blamed the Obama administration for “smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation” and was apparently submitted to the FCC last May.
Schneiderman’s office told USA TODAY that an assistant press secretary for the New York Attorney General also turned up as having made false comments. Another submission was apparently made by a person who passed away prior to having supposedly made the comments.
Meanwhile, a sister of a USA TODAY editor also turned up as having submitted a comment that she didn’t make.
If your identity has been stolen for the purposes of making a false comment, you can report it on the site Schneiderman set up as part of his investigation.
The FCC encourages individuals who find comments falsely posted under their names to submit their actual comments, and information about the false comments, to the FCC site to ensure the record reflects their views. It is not possible for the FCC to remove comments, the agency said.
Schneiderman has said that as technologies evolve the public comments process needs to evolve with them, with penalties in place for abusers. Since Schneiderman’s office announced the website where people could search to see if their identities were misused, and report if that is the case, some 4,000 submissions have been made, from people all over the country.
On Monday, the New York Attorney General and 28 U.S. senators asked FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to delay the vote; Pai’s office has declined to do so.
Beyond the stolen identities, other false submissions used fake email addresses or names such as Homer Simpson or Superman. It isn’t clear whether such falsified comments are coming from individuals, organizations, bots or some combination, all part of the Schneiderman investigation. The Attorney General is also looking into reports that there is an overlap between various data breaches and the names used to make comments.