For the last 6 months, my office has been investigating a flood of fake comments that corrupted the FCC’s net neutrality comment process. Approximately 1 million of those comments may have been submitted using real people’s stolen identities--including those of as many as 50K New Yorkers, such as a dead person and a 13 year old child. This is akin to identity theft on a massive scale, and it undermines the public’s right to be heard at the most basic level of our government’s rulemaking.
Yesterday, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and I held a press conference to update on my office’s investigation and called on the FCC to delay its net neutrality vote until we can get to the bottom of it. In an era where foreign governments have indisputably tried to use the internet and social media to influence our elections, federal & state governments should be working together to ensure that malevolent actors cannot subvert our administrative agencies’ decision-making processes. You can watch our full press conference here: https://youtu.be/TtZEC21QN-c.
I’ll be back this afternoon to take your questions!
In the meantime, a few things you can do to help in this fight:
1. My office requested help in our investigation from the FCC at least 9 times, but the FCC’s Chairman and his staff responded by stonewalling (yesterday, the FCC’s IG finally indicated they may assist with our investigation). So we’ve gone to the public. My office has set up a website for you to check whether your name was used to submit fake comments, & file a report if it was: https://ag.ny.gov/fakecomments.
2. While FCC Chairman Pai has declared his intention to roll back net neutrality, we can still beat this effort back in Congress. If you haven't already spoken to your representatives, please do it today. You can contact your Senators and Congresspeople through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
Thanks all. Keep speaking out.