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Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

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Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#71

Post by carapace »

Natsu wrote: post #68
carapace wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is whether canned responses came from a "organic" groundswell of concerned citizen or a handful of astroturfers.

Which doesn't make much sense, because the arguments are used in the decision making process, not the number of comments. This wasn't some kind of vote where you could stuff the ballot box, this was somewhere that you could flag items of concern. We all know that anyone could fake an IP address, as well. It would take little thought to spam a bunch of nonsense through a random proxy via a script. But, just like every…

> They were looking for legal arguments made by people regarding their plans, not public support.

Are you sure? My impression was that they were (supposed to be) gauging popular sentiment.

An open solicitation for legal arguments from the public at large seems, uh, counter-intuitive to me.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#72

Post by ikeboy »

geofft wrote: post #69
ikeboy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They also haven't given you enough information to know the size of the pro-NN batch they investigated, so we still don't know that it's "massive." There's thousands of people who said they didn't leave the respective comments. That's enough to be statistically significant and to extrapolate across the whole sample. There might be selection bias, as only a small percentage of people responded.

Sure. So how big is that population you can extrapolate over? The WSJ article is carefully not saying, 32% of people who appear to have left pro-NN comments said they didn't make them. They said 32% of people in this batch did. They didn't say, as far as I can tell, how big the batch is. (Maybe I'm just misreading?) There's a big difference between "32% of a thousand pro-NN comments are untrustworthy" and "60% of a m…

>There's a big difference between "32% of a thousand pro-NN comments are untrustworthy" and "60% of a million anti-NN comments are untrustworthy."

If you look on the sidebars, they reached thousands of people on both sides that disclaimed the comments left in their name. Given the abysmal response rate, the total size of the batches would have been hundreds of thousands at least for both sides.

>The WSJ, like any MSM outlet, is manipulating you through half-truths. Pay attention.

Look. I agree with you that we should be skeptical of such claims. But you seem to be applying that skepticism only to claims about one side.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#73

Post by exabrial »

wool_gather wrote: post #43
exabrial wrote: post #31

I have a lot of issues with this. This should have never been recorded by a government agency. Be careful what you wish for.

Can you elaborate? Identifying yourself (name) is part of the process when submitting a comment anyways. And I don't see why we wouldn't want our government's servers to have logs that can be inspected when we have questions about integrity.

Do you identify yourself when you vote? Yes. Is your identity recorded with your vote? No.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#74

Post by redbeard0x0a »

rrauenza wrote: post #14
ikeboy wrote: post #6

Friendly reminder that there were massive bot compaigns on both sides of the issue. https://archive.fo/sp9Q7 this WSJ article found thousands of people that said they never posted the comments attributed to them. >One 369-word comment supporting the Obama-era net-neutrality rules was posted on the FCC website more than 300,000 times. One of those was attributed to Gloria Burney, 87, a retired speech therapist in Los…

I found a comment attributed to my parents, asked them about it and they had no idea how it could have happened.

my grandmother too, asked her and she had no idea what I was talking about

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#75

Post by colejohnson66 »

exabrial wrote: post #73
wool_gather wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Identifying yourself (name) is part of the process when submitting a comment anyways. And I don't see why we wouldn't want our government's servers to have logs that can be inspected when we have questions about integrity.

Do you identify yourself when you vote? Yes. Is your identity recorded with your vote? No.

This wasn’t a vote. There’s no constitutional protection of “secret comments”

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#77

Post by m463 »

acdha wrote: post #57
rasengan wrote: post #2

This is definitely a touchy subject. As the article notes, this will remove the privacy from all people who commented on net neutrality, but it will also allow 2 NYTimes reporters to try to figure out why there were fake comments that led to the loss of neutrality for the people. The separate question that still needs to be figured out, is who is going to be penalized for lying to the american people and taking away…

I don’t think this is actually much of a privacy change. Here’s what you agree to when you submit a comment: > Any comments that you submit to the FCC on a proposed rulemaking, petition, or other document for which public comment is requested will be made public, including any personally identifiable information you include in your submission. We may share non-personally identifiable information with others, includin…

You could probably aggregate the IP addresses in a few ways and even maintain privacy:

- how many submissions came from the ISP law offices address block?

- how many submissions came from lobby group #12's address block?

- which ip addresses had more than 20 unique submissions?

then use the results as the basis for investigations. Some results could be benign, some results could be less so.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#78

Post by unishark »

rambojazz wrote: post #24

The original title is "Judge Orders FCC to Hand Over IP Addresses Linked to Fake Net Neutrality Comments"! Removing "Fake" makes it sound like a completely different thing.

Certainly it's not _completely_ different, though it does largely neuter the editorializing that is a main point of the article.

What really happened here is a judge orders an agency to comply with the freedom of information act because the agency had not made a sufficient case that it was exempted from doing so in this instance. Doesn't address who is right about the "fakeness" question.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#79

Post by Natsu »

carapace wrote: post #71
Natsu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which doesn't make much sense, because the arguments are used in the decision making process, not the number of comments. This wasn't some kind of vote where you could stuff the ballot box, this was somewhere that you could flag items of concern. We all know that anyone could fake an IP address, as well. It would take little thought to spam a bunch of nonsense through a random proxy via a script. But, just like every…

> They were looking for legal arguments made by people regarding their plans, not public support. Are you sure? My impression was that they were (supposed to be) gauging popular sentiment. An open solicitation for legal arguments from the public at large seems, uh, counter-intuitive to me.

Yes, public comment like this is an ordinary part of their rulemaking. You can see something similar if you read, e.g. the responses to requests for DMCA exceptions from the Library of Congress. It may seem weird, but plenty of interested parties have lawyers bring up whatever legal points they wish to raise.

But that's also why I don't see them paying attention to the wishes of the general public at all. Most of us aren't lawyers and unless we raise some legal point, nothing we say actually matters to them at all. I think it's pretty clear that they went ahead with plans they had from the start.

So whether or not Russians or other foreigners commented in a web form open to the world or not, I don't see it as having mattered one bit.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#80

Post by hardsoftnfloppy »

rideontime wrote: post #62

It's already been discovered that fake comments were generated using personal information found in data breaches. I've lost hope of anybody being held responsible for this obvious fraud. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f...

Sure, but it’s much more difficult to mass fake IPs for said comments. Which is why this is an important decision. Sure the ISPs could probably pull logs for who said what when, but those IPs won’t even be relevant to their current owners. Anyone mass gaming the comment system, even if using stolen identities, were not going to take the time to post each comment from an individual and unique IP address.
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