Today, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) asked the Justice Department to investigate the use of stolen identities in the submission of public comments on net neutrality to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
But he asked for a probe of only these anti-net neutrality comments, even though we recently released two analyses demonstrating that hundreds of thousands of fake emails were sent in support of net neutrality.
Despite his professed support for net-neutrality, Rep. Pallone provides non-neutral information based on a murky allegation from an activist group that provides no substantive analysis or investigative proof regarding the alleged 450,000 “fake” comments in question.
In contrast, our analyses were based on fact. We offered specific examples of the fraud we identified, and when possible, we quantified it. We found that there are hundreds of thousands of comments in the docket from people who say they never filed, from fake email addresses, and from fake international addresses including thousands appearing to be from Russia.
Our two analyses received widespread media attention when they were released. Why did Pallone choose to ignore them?