Months Later, And People Are Still Discovering Their Dead Loved Ones Were Used To Support Killing Net Neutrality

from the disinformation-nation dept

By now we've well-established that the FCC's attempt to repeal net neutrality rules has been rife with fraud. From fake DDOS attacks to bogus comments during the open comment period, there was a fairly obvious effort made by the FCC and a mysterious ally (gosh, who benefits?) to downplay massive public opposition to the plan. And while the FCC has completely blocked law enforcement investigations into which group was behind these efforts, you can expect significantly more details to emerge during the court battles in the new year.

That said, nearly four months have passed since the FCC closed its public comment period, and we're still finding new instances of identity theft, or cases where a dead loved one's identity was used to justify the FCC's blatant handout to telecom duopolies. For example, the brother of Stranger Things star Sean Astin posted on Twitter that their dead mother's identity had been used to help kill net neutrality:

Hey, @AjitPaiFCC, today my mom would have turned 71. But she didn't. Because she died in March of 2016. Can you please take the time to explain to me how she made three separate comments in support of ending #NetNeutrality more than a year after she died? cc: @SeanAstin pic.twitter.com/VtdLaB0eGp — Mackenzie Astin (@MackenzieAstin) December 15, 2017

Many folks are only now understanding the scope of the fraud thanks to this tool provided by the New York Attorney General's office, which is investigating the fraud. Unsurprisingly, folks that have discovered their dead loved ones are being used as political props to help Comcast aren't particularly happy about it:

Saw this tweet and looked up my mom. https://t.co/9geZVNxKwN Hey, @AjitPaiFCC, how does my radically liberal activist mother, who passed away 4 years ago, post an anti-net neutrality comment to the FCC in August 2017?? YOU. MASSIVE. PIECE. OF. SHIT. pic.twitter.com/IYkjh9O0mE — Morgan Allan Knutson (@morganknutson) December 15, 2017

Even Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley says his name was used by the hackers to falsely support killing net neutrality:

Turns out someone impersonated me during the @FCC #NetNeutrality comment period – further proof of forged comments in this process. We need to get to the bottom of this and demand justice for those who sought to be heard. pic.twitter.com/k8SOzHtS9J — Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) December 18, 2017

And do you know what the Trump FCC is doing about this? Bupkis. Nothing. Zero. It's fairly clear by now that the goal all along was to undermine public trust in the integrity of the comment period in the hopes of downplaying legitimate public opposition to the repeal. But if journalists, activists and citizens can obtain data tying the fraudulent comments to an ISP-funded organization, next year's court battle over the repeal could get very interesting, very quickly.

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Filed Under: comments, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality