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Radio News: FCC mum about hack of its website during net neutrality commenting
May 21, 2017 11:43 pm
ZDNet reports that the Federal Communication Commission won't reveal evidence of an alleged distributed denial-of-service attack against the radio regulating agency. The hack on the FCC's website is said to have prevented many people from commenting on the FCC's website in support of net neutrality. The attack came a few weeks ago just after John Oliver's latest rant about net neutrality on HBO. Oliver set up his own website, gofccyourself.com, to get around the FCC's now-more-complicated online commenting process, and urged viewers to make public comments to save net neutrality. Just then, ZDNet and others have reported, unknown anti-net neutrality spammers posted hundreds of thousands of the same messages to the FCC's website commenting about the net neutrality issue. The FCC voted last week to begin the process of rolling back the net neutrality regulations, which will allow a handful of internet companies to create "fast lanes" on the internet for those with money to spend. Evan Greer, campaign director at Fight for the Future, a non-profit group promoting internet freedoms, said the FCC should be able to figure out who was behind the attack on its website. "If the fake comments -- many of which are using real people's names and addresses without their permission -- were submitted using the FCC's API, that means they should absolutely have information about who is committing this act of fraud," she said. Two senators, Ron Wyden and Brian Schatz, have written to the FCC to inquire about the agency's claims it was attacked by an "external party."