Isn't identity theft against the law? Who should go to jail for this?

Buzzfeed:

“The Justice Department is investigating whether crimes were committed when potentially millions of people’s identities were posted to the FCC’s website without their permission, falsely attributing to them opinions about net neutrality rules, BuzzFeed News has learned…

“The rule enjoyed broad public support, according to multiple polls, and required a period of public comment before Pai’s change could go into effect. More than 20 million comments have since appeared on the site, with the New York Attorney General’s office estimating that up to 9.5 million of those were filed in people’s names without their consent.”

Wow! I wonder if FCC chairman Ajit Pai might know sumpin’ about how nearly half of all the public comments were fake when he proposed overturning Net Neutrality rules. Maybe in his enthusiasm to get the preferred Employee of the Moth parking spot, ol Ajit might have, um, bent some rules?

“As part of the New York Attorney General’s previously announced investigation, the agency in October issued subpoenas to 14 organizations — 11 of which are either politically conservative or related to the telecommunications industry and opposed net neutrality, and three of which supported it. The offices of the attorneys general of both Massachusetts and Washington, DC, are supporting the New York investigation, and also issued subpoenas. Their participation has not been previously reported.”

Really, the FCC hired professional rat-effers? Seems like it should be straight forward to find out what the FCC, a public entity, did! Let’s file a Freedom of Information Act and find out!

“Earlier this week, the FCC issued a decision on two Freedom of Information requests, filed by BuzzFeed News and the New York Times. In it, the commission voted not to release the records that the news organizations had requested: data from web-server logs that could shed additional light on the suspicious comments.”

Weird, innit, that the rule that IPs wanted overturned, could end up having so many comments provided by real people who did not make comments.

I mean, it would be wrong and paranoid to suggest the the IPs themselves, who know all their users’ identities, might have committed identity theft to buy themselves the rule that they wanted, wouldn’t it?

crossposted from Mock Paper Scissors