“Fake” Net Neutrality Comments At Heart Of Lawsuit Filed Against FCC
By Jon Brodkin for ARS Technica - Prechtel argued that the data he requested can be used to determine whether "any groups of comments submitted by particular e-mail addresses correlate with what other previous comment analyses suspect are fake comments" and "if any suspicious e-mail address URLs (lobbyists, PR firms, .gov addresses, non-US domain names, etc.) were allowed to submit bulk comments." Prechtel also argues that suspicious comment uploading patterns might shed light on the FCC comment system's downtime on May 8, an event the FCC has blamed on multiple distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Democratic lawmakers have criticized the FCC for failing to provide information substantiating the DDoS claims and have called for an independent investigation. "I believe the API key log information I requested can help identify who was behind the alleged FCC cyberattack on May 7-8," Prechtel told Ars. But so far, his efforts to get that information have been met with silence, he said. "It has now been over three months since anyone at the FCC has reached out to me, and nearly two months since they have been legally required to respond to my request or request another extension to process it," he said. Prechtel is being represented by Loevy & Loevy, which also represented him in a previous FoIA lawsuit involving the Chicago Transit Authority.