Senator Wyden Argues FCC Is Either Incompetent Or Lying About Alleged DDoS Attack

from the derailing-the-John-Oliver-effect dept

Last week we noted how the FCC was acting incredibly suspicious in regards to its May claim that a DDOS attack, not annoyed John Oliver viewers, brought down the agency's website shortly after Oliver's latest rant on net neutrality. Despite pressure from journalists and several Senators, the FCC is simply refusing to release any data providing the existence of the attack, resulting in many media outlets not so subtly implying that the agency was lying:

"The FCC’s refusal to produce records of any true relevance reflects pressure from the agency’s upper echelon to limit the disclosure of information about the incident to a handful of carefully crafted public statements...It would be hard for a government agency to do more to give off the impression that it was engaged in a cover up. That’s troubling given the rise of questions over the FCC’s integrity.

As we noted last week, there are really only two options here. One, the FCC was attacked coincidentally at the same time John Oliver's program aired, it just failed to do any meaningful written analysis of the attack, and has zero interest in being transparent about it. Two, the FCC made up the attack completely to try to deflate all the talk about the "John Oliver effect" in the press, a misguided continuation of the agency's clear desire to downplay the massive public opposition to Pai's plan to kill net neutrality.

Based on the FCC's other recent behaviors in regards to ignoring comment fraud to this same purpose, it's fairly obvious the latter is a very real possibility. But with the FCC refusing to comply to FOIA requests, it's going to take some notable outside pressure to get to the truth. That's not going to be easy given that despite broad bipartisan support for the rules, ISPs have successfully convinced the public this is a partisan issue, which helps them stall meaningful discourse by bogging the entire process down in thinking-optional partisan patty cake.

Under the din of this dysfunction, Senator Ron Wyden was quick to highlight at the hearing that the FCC doesn't look particularly good here regardless of your political leaning:

"Senator Ron Wyden...stated in an email to Gizmodo that the agency’s response to Gizmodo’s FOIA request raised "legitimate questions about whether the agency is being truthful when it claims a DDoS attack knocked its commenting system offline." The Oregon senator said it was critical that the agency produce evidence of the attack, if only so independent experts could verify and learn something from it. He continued: "If the FCC did suffer a DDoS attack and yet created no written materials about it, that would be deeply irresponsible and cast doubt on how the FCC could possibly prevent future attacks. On the other hand, if FCC is playing word games to avoid responding to FOIA requests, it would clearly violate Chairman Ajit Pai’s pledge to increase transparency at the FCC."

The FCC's contention is that for fifteen hours after the attack, nobody sent an e-mail, wrote a memo, or documented this supposed attack in any fashion. And again, this lack of transparency about any of this is in stark contrast to FCC boss Ajit Pai's repeated, breathless claims that he was going to bring a new wave of transparency to the agency. This lack of transparency will become increasingly stark as the agency continues to gut popular, meaningful consumer protections -- leaving the only thing standing between you and your carrier's bullshit an unelected bureaucrat that believes anti-competitive behavior in the telecom sector isn't a real problem.

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Filed Under: ajit pai, ddos, fcc, john oliver, lies, ron wyden