The Patent Troll Lobby Set Up An AI-Powered Comment Creator To Support Its Bad Patent Policy

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the all-regulatory-comments-are-now-chatgpt's-opinion dept

You may recall that, back during the last net neutrality open comment period, the FCC’s comment system was overrun by millions of faked comments, including from many dead people. Not surprisingly, it was eventually determined that legacy broadband companies funded the fake comment submissions, which they felt they needed to do because actual activists were actually effective in getting the public to speak out in favor of net neutrality.

But of course, now we live in the “age of generative AI,” and it’s worth wondering just how that’s going to impact all of this. Amusingly, there are already academic journals suggesting that the government should sort and maybe even respond to regulatory open comments using AI as a tool.

But what about commenters themselves using AI to generate the comments in question?

We just recently wrote about how the US Patent Office is seeking comments on a dangerously problematic plan to make it much harder to kill bad patents by reforming the IPR (inter partes review) process to allow the patent director to just flat out reject challenges for certain classes of inventors, including many patent trolls. In that post, we linked to an EFF page urging people to send in their own comments against this proposal. But, really, the EFF is just linking people directly to the page on the Federal Register where you can comment. While they suggest some language, on the whole they expect users to write their own comment.

It appears the patent trolls who want this change have decided to use AI.

A few folks forwarded me copies of an email they received from “US Inventor” which is, effectively, a lobbying trade group for patent trolls, telling their members to submit a comment, and pointing them to an app on Streamlit. I’ll note that the email is ridiculous:

As you may know, the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA) created the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The PTAB is a nonjudicial administrative tribunal within the USPTO. The sole purpose of this court is to invalidate the same patents the USPTO previously granted, thus, creating a dictatorial power for the USPTO Director over America’s most important property right.

The statistics tell the truth about the destruction the PTAB has caused for inventors, small business owners, and startups. A staggering 69% of trials resulted in all claims being unpatentable, with an additional 15% leading to some claims being unpatentable. In total, 84% of patents reviewed by the PTAB result in the cancellation of claims. 

I mean, no, as the Supreme Court itself made clear, just as the US PTO can grant a patent, so too can they review it, and then revoke it, if they realize they made a mistake. That’s not “dictatorial power.” And, let’s not even get started on the idea that patents are “America’s most important property right.” I mean, people with brains read this. Don’t insult them.

As for the second paragraph, a normal person would read that and think, wow, it sure looks like the IPR process that enables the PTAB to review patents is pretty damn important since it appears to be catching a very large number of mistakenly granted patents, which would otherwise gum up the work of actual innovation by blocking innovators from bringing products to market.

Because, remember, if the patent is a good, valid, patent, then the PTAB will not cancel claims. The only reason the PTAB cancels claims is if they are bad claims that should not have been granted in the first place, and would create an innovation-destroying monopoly power to block products that should be on the market. So even in this email, the troll lobby is effectively admitting that their real problem with the IPR/PTAB process is that it’s getting rid of their bad patent claims, that never should have been granted.

Anyway, the email sends people to a form that says will help you craft a comment. They don’t say it’s using AI, but it is.

You put in a link to a bio or a LinkedIn profile, some “information about you or your company” and then it generates a pro-patent troll argument for you. It gives you three attempts to do this.

The person who forwarded me the email also tried generating the letters, using the LinkedIn addresses of random people, and the “comments” it generated… were clearly just using AI to read someone’s LinkedIn bio to add some “pro-patent color” at the beginning, then some random AI-generated nonsense in the middle, before appending the identical text at the end of the comment.

Sometimes, the results are (in true generative AI fashion) total gibberish. One of the samples I saw definitely attacked the PTAB, but not for the IPR process. Instead, one claimed that the PTAB was changing claims to appear even broader than the inventor meant (which, um, is not happening).

Of course, the end of each of the “generated” comments is identical, and appears to be pre-filled in the comment generator app. No matter what information you put into the generator, at the end it pushes specific “policy alterations” that the submitter (who did not write the comment) claims should be considered.

Now, there’s an argument that making it easier to generate stronger comments during public comment periods might be a good thing in general. Having read some terrible comments submitted by the public, I could see some general value in letting people scribble in their general thoughts (like they normally submit) and having a tool turn it into something more substantive and useful. But… it also likely means that open comment systems for the federal government are even more likely to be overrun with questionable comments, probably many of which were not even generated by humans.

And that seems like it could be problematic for the overall process of regulatory bodies seeking public comments in the first place.

Filed Under: ai, comments, fake comments, ipr, patent trolls, patents, ptab, regulatory comments
Companies: us inventor

NY AG Doles Out Wrist Slap Fine To Companies That Helped Telecom Giants Use Fake And Dead People To Lie About Net Neutrality

Scams

from the fake-plastic-trees dept

You might recall how when U.S. telecom giants lobbied the Trump FCC to kill net neutrality, they hired a bunch of PR firms to flood the FCC with fake comments from a bunch of fake and dead people. The goal: create the illusion of support for shitty, unpopular policies. It’s a pretty popular tactic by corporations and lobbying firms looking to influence the government and/or create the illusion of consensus.

In 2021, New York Attorney General Leticia James unveiled a report (also see accompanying statement) proving what most people already knew: the broadband industry was behind the use of fake and dead people to generate bogus support for the FCC’s controversial 2017 repeal of net neutrality. The report didn’t name any specific broadband companies and only singled out the proxy firms they used.

Several years later, and James’ office has finally managed to dole out a wrist slap fine ($615,000) for the three PR and policy firms used by the broadband industry: LCX Digital Media, Lead ID, LLC., and Ifficient Inc. All three “lead generation” companies also worked for other companies looking to influence policies at agencies like the EPA. And not for the betterment of competent policymaking or mankind.

Once again, none of the telecom monopolies that actually hired the firms (Comcast and AT&T are often suspected to be the most active in these kinds of campaigns) are even named in the announcement, despite James likely knowing full well who paid for these “services.” In a statement, James tries to pretend that such a half-assed penalty will actually change anything:

“No one should have their identity co-opted by manipulative companies and used to falsely promote a private agenda,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in an announcement Wednesday.

Again, these fake comment efforts are glorified propaganda campaigns by deep-pocketed corporations designed to provide flimsy cover for corrupt and captured regulators to make policy decisions that are opposed by a majority of Americans (the repeal of net neutrality saw widespread, bipartisan opposition).

One such effort plagued a proceeding at the Labor Department, where numerous people who either don’t exist or don’t recall ever sending messages breathlessly opposed agency efforts to prevent conflicts of interest in retirement advice. The same problem plagued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when it proposed a rule trying to rein in some of the nastier habits of the payday lending industry.

Nobody in government or policy circles ever seems to show much interest in getting to the bottom of this problem. The public rarely can be bothered to care either (kudos to you if you made it this far down this article). And in the rare instance where somebody does act (like the NY AG), the fines are a tiny pittance in relation to whatever policy proposal the companies were attempting to game out.

Now pause for a moment and consider how “AI” tech like ChatGPT will make these kinds of lobbying influence and propaganda campaigns cheaper and easier than ever just as we face a well-funded, deeply coordinated campaign to finally and fully defang the regulatory state once and for all.

Filed Under: broadband, chevron deference, consumer rights, fake comments, fcc, letitia james, net neutrality, propaganda, regulators, trump
Companies: ifficient, lcx digital media, lead id

AT&T Is Astroturfing The FCC In Support Of Trump's Dumb Attack On Social Media

Failures

from the fake-support-for-dumb-ideas dept

We’ve noted for a long time that telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T have been pushing (quite successfully) for massive deregulation of their own monopolies, while pushing for significant new regulation of the Silicon Valley giants whose ad revenues they’ve coveted for decades. As such, it wasn’t surprising to see AT&T come out with a incredibly dumb blog post this week supporting Trump’s legally dubious and hugely problematic executive order targeting social media giants. You know, the plan that not only isn’t enforceable by the agencies supposedly tasked with enforcing it (the FCC), but that also risks creating a massive new censorship paradigm across the entire internet.

As Mike already noted, AT&T’s post was a pile of bad faith nonsense, weirdly conflating net neutrality with the ham-fisted attack on Section 230. AT&T just got done deriding the FCC’s relatively modest net neutrality rules as “government interference in the internet run amok.” Yet here it is, advocating for a terrible plan that attempts to shovel the FCC into the role of regulating speech on social media, authority it simply doesn’t have. For those that tracked the net neutrality fight, the intellectual calisthenics required here by folks like AT&T and its favorite FCC officials have been stunning, even for Trumpland:

By “momentum,” Carr clearly means “intellectually-flimsy support by lobbyists employed by a telecom monopoly.”

Folks like FCC boss Ajit Pai know damn well Trump’s order is laughable and legally dubious, going against nearly every principle they spent the last decade claiming to stand for. But they’re going through the motions anyway to avoid upsetting dear leader and derailing any future political prospects. As a result, the FCC is burning resources holding a public comment period on Trump’s EO and the (equally laughable) petition from the NTIA.

Numerous folks have submitted their comments on the record (you can read Mike’s here). That includes AT&T, which is apparently not only busy making intellectually inconsistent arguments, but is providing form letters to other organizations to try and get them to support Trump’s crappy EO. Some folks digging through the comments noticed that a lot of these groups are submitting AT&T’s form letters to the FCC… without bothering to proof read them first:

It is surely only a coincidence that several groups with links to AT&T all submitted the same exact letter:

This is a greasy lobbying tactic companies like AT&T have employed for years. In fact, we wrote a piece just about a decade ago busting AT&T for the exact same behavior. AT&T can routinely be found giving money to groups in exchange for support for problematic to downright terrible policies, be it be support for AT&T’s latest merger, or the culling of any meaningful oversight of telecom monopolies. Often this includes the “co-opting” of even civil rights or consumer groups. Other times, it involves the creation of entirely bogus “consumer rights” or advocacy groups.

The goal is always the same: to create the illusion of broad support for what’s almost always terrible tech policy that aids AT&T in some way.

This sort of “astroturfing” (fake grass roots) has been a problem nobody wants to fix. This being the Trump FCC, you shouldn’t expect them to police this kind of gamesmanship with any sort of integrity. You’ll recall that the FCC not only turned a blind eye as the telecom sector used dead, fake, or hijacked personalities to spam the FCC during the net neutrality repeal, it actively blocked law enforcement inquiries into who was behind them.

This corporate co-opting of what’s often the only chance the public has to express their thought on the record plagues numerous agencies, not just the FCC. And given AT&T’s still busy doing this sort of thing nearly a decade after being busted for the exact same thing, you can clearly see how important protecting the integrity of public policy discourse is for U.S. leaders. Granted if your arguments are sound on their merits (which the Trump EO most certainly isn’t), you wouldn’t need to generate fake support from dead people or co-opted organizations in the first place.

Filed Under: ajit pai, astroturf, brendan carr, comment, fake comments, fcc, ntia, section 230
Companies: at&t

Surprise! Buzzfeed Links Bogus Net Neutrality Comments Directly To Broadband Industry

Failures

from the fake-plastic-trees dept

We’ve long discussed how the Pai FCC’s net neutrality repeal was plagued with millions of fraudulent comments, many of which were submitted by a bot pulling names from a hacked database of some kind. Millions of ordinary folks (like myself) had their identities used to support Pai’s unpopular plan, as did several Senators. Numerous journalists like Jason Prechtel have submitted FOIA requests for more data (server logs, IP addresses, API data, anything) that might indicate who was behind the fraudulent comments, who may have bankrolled them, and what the Pai FCC knew about it.

Those efforts have slowly been paying off. Back in January, Gizmodo linked some of the fake comments to Trump associates and some DC lobbying shops like CQ Roll Call. This week, Buzzfeed went even further, drawing a direct line between the fake comments and the broadband industry:

“A BuzzFeed News investigation ? based on an analysis of millions of comments, along with court records, business filings, and interviews with dozens of people ? offers a window into how a crucial democratic process was skewed by one of the most prolific uses of political impersonation in US history. In a key part of the puzzle, two little-known firms, Media Bridge and LCX Digital, working on behalf of industry group Broadband for America, misappropriated names and personal information as part of a bid to submit more than 1.5 million statements favorable to their cause.”

Broadband For America, who we’ve discussed previously, pretends to be a coalition of “consumer groups” and other interests “dedicated to protecting a free and open internet for all Americans.” But it’s little more than a cut out for Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and other industry giants. Via a slow and painstaking FOIA process, Buzzfeed ultimately linked many of the stolen identities to major data breaches like the hack of modern business solutions by matching the fraudulent names via the hack database at HaveIBeenPwned.

Just in case the lede gets buried here: the broadband industry hired shady goons to use stolen data to create fake public support for anti-consumer tech policy. And nobody (especially the FCC) has done a damn thing about it.

Granted the net neutrality repeal is just one of many examples of lobbyists polluting regulatory comment periods (usually the only time consumers are allowed to give feedback on policy decisions) with fake people, and both Media Bridge and LCX Digital appear to have other clients beyond just the broadband sector:

“The anti?net neutrality comments harvested on behalf of Broadband for America, the industry group that represented telecommunications giants including AT&T, Cox, and Comcast, were uploaded to the FCC website by Media Bridge founder Shane Cory, a former executive director of both the Libertarian Party and the conservative sting group Project Veritas. Cory has claimed credit for ?20 or 30? major public advocacy campaigns in recent years, including, he says, record-setting submissions to the IRS, Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and ?probably a handful of others.”

Classy! Given that both the DOJ and the NY Attorney General are (supposedly still) conducting ongoing inquiries into the fake net neutrality comments, this may not be the last time you’ll see these lobbying shops’ names in lights. Meanwhile it’s rather ironic that the same week a court ruling comes down supporting (mostly) the FCC’s repeal, a big chunk of the “public support” for the repeal — and the FCC’s primary justification for it (that the rules stifled broadband investment) — were clearly proven to be fraudulent. So far, one gets the sneaking suspicion the US legal system may just be broken.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, fake comments, fcc, identity fraud, net neutrality
Companies: at&t, broadband for america, comcast, lcx digital, media bridge, verizon

The Super 'Transparent' Pai FCC Is Still Trying To Hide Details On Those Fake Net Neutrality Comments

Failures

from the dysfunction-junction dept

We’ve long discussed how the Pai FCC’s net neutrality repeal was plagued with millions of fraudulent comments, many of which were submitted by a bot pulling names from a hacked database of some kind. Millions of ordinary folks (like myself) had their identities used to support Pai’s unpopular plan, as did several Senators. Numerous journalists have submitted FOIA requests for more data (server logs, IP addresses, API data, anything) that might indicate who was behind the fraudulent comments, who may have bankrolled them, and what the Pai FCC knew about it.

But the Pai FCC has repeatedly tried to tap dance around FOIA requests, leading to several journalists (including those at the New York Times and Buzzfeed) suing the FCC. Despite the Times’ lawyers best efforts to work with the FCC to tailor the nature of their requests over a period of months, the agency continues to hide behind FOIA exemptions that don’t really apply here: namely FOIA exemption 6 (related to protecting privacy) and 7E (related to protecting agency security and law enforcement activity).

In court filings made last week, the FCC also reiterated its claim that the primary reason it won’t release more data is because it’s just super concerned about user privacy:

“If the FCC is compelled to disclose an individual?s IP address, operating system and version, browser platform and version, and language settings, and that information is linked to the individual?s publicly-available name and postal address, that disclosure would result in clearly unwarranted invasions of personal privacy,? the FCC argues in papers filed late last week with U.S. District Court Judge Lorna Schofield in the Southern District of New York.”

To be clear, this is the same FCC that did absolutely nothing to prevent or address the fraud, then actively blocked law enforcement inquiries into this issue. In other words, this FCC has had numerous opportunities to cooperate with both law enforcement by providing confidential data, and has refused to do so. It’s also the same FCC that has done absolutely nothing about countless privacy scandals in the telecom sector, suggesting this sudden breathless concern for privacy may not be particularly authentic.

NY Times lawyers have responded by claiming they’re entitled to the data under the freedom of information act, and it’s essential to discovering where the bogus comments originated. They’ve also argued that information like IP address isn’t all that sacred, since most of the commenters have likely utilized countless different IP addresses in the several years since:

“Most individuals connect their devices to the internet using a steadily changing series of IP addresses assigned by internet service providers,? the Times wrote in a motion for summary judgment. ?An internet-connected device?s IP address today may not be its IP address tomorrow. And the IP address of a device used by a commenter in mid-2017 is almost certainly not its IP address in mid-2019.”

Using the data they’ve collected so far, diligent reporters have already found many of the fake comments were driven by CQ Roll Call, a DC-based news and policy organization, and Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF), a “dark money” influence group with historical ties to defending tobacco companies. Who their clients were in this instance should be fairly obvious, but nobody has been able to publicly, directly link the effort to the telecom sector just yet. Given several ongoing lawsuits and investigations by numerous state AGs, the GAO, and FBI, it still seems fairly likely that there’s several chapters in this ridiculous novel yet to come.

Filed Under: ajit pai, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality, privacy, transparency

Contrary To Media Claims, There's No Evidence Russia Was Behind Fake Net Neutrality Comments

Overhype

from the a-game-of-telephone dept

Earlier this week we noted how the Ajit Pai FCC again shot down journalist FOIA attempts to find out who was behind the millions of bogus comments that plagued the agency’s net neutrality repeal. The move prompted one of the agency’s commissioners, Jessica Rosenworcel, to accuse her own agency of a coverup–since Pai refuses to work with either journalists or law enforcement investigations trying to uncover the truth of who was behind the comment fraud.

In an uncharacteristically snarky statement (pdf) issued the same day, Pai attempted to dismiss the criticisms as purely partisan attacks. But he also acknowledged something we already knew…that 500,000 or so of the email addresses used in the FCC’s comment form came from users purportedly on Russian ISPs. From his statement:

“…one finds the now-standard overheated rhetoric about ?net neutrality? (omitting, as usual, the fact that the half-million comments submitted from Russian e-mail addresses and the nearly eight million comments filed by e-mail addresses from e-mail domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com supported her position on the issue!).”

So this is nothing new. Media reports had noted previously how 444,938 of the millions of bogus comments happened to have Russian email addresses. The New York Times’ FOIA-focused lawsuit against the FCC also specifically highlights these addresses (many of which actually supported retaining net neutrality), likely in the hopes this would lend a little extra gravitas to court consideration.

Yet in the modern news media cycle, which can often resemble a game of telephone, numerous media outlets somehow rushed to the conclusion that Pai had “confirmed” that Russia must have been behind the efforts to stuff the ballot box at the FCC. Just a smattering of examples from this week:

That’s fairly remarkable, given that’s not what Pai said, nor is there any proof that “Russia” itself interfered with the net neutrality public comment period.

While many of these stories were more nuanced than the headlines (which writers often don’t get to pick), the reality is the headlines are all a pretty large majority of people read. The Daily Dot report in particular was a huge hit on Reddit, upvoted more than 66,000 times and circulated far and wide. Not too surprisingly, the media’s collective headline errors quickly drove many on Twitter to accuse Pai of being a Russian agent himself in dire need of prosecution:

Even Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term net neutrality, circulated one of the headlines claiming Russia itself had been “linked” to the comment fraud:

Here’s the problem: while these 500,000 email addresses used in the FCC’s form appear to be Russian, that may not mean all that much.

Whoever stuffed the FCC comment section with farmed support (and in some cases opposition) for the repeal used all kinds of tricks to generate the bogus identities, including a bot that pulled names alphabetically from a hacked database of some kind. Many of the names used were dead people. Anybody could have plugged Russian email addresses into some of these form-generated responses, without actually representing the Russian government or even Russian people, thanks largely to an FCC website that didn’t even remotely try to ferret out spam or bullshit.

Putin’s adoration of hacking and disinformation is a legitimate problem, even if many may disagree on the breadth of the impact the Russian leader’s digital dick waving has had on the real world and elections. And while it’s certainly possible that Russia’s attempts to pour gasoline on our already napalm-esque levels of dysfunction extended to the net neutrality fight, there’s simply no evidence actually supporting that claim right now. Nor did Pai state that there was.

In similar cases, the evidence that inevitably appears usually points to a more obvious culprit: industry. These kinds of fake comments have been plaguing multiple US government agencies and proceedings in the states over the last few years, from proceedings at the Labor Department trying to rein in financial fraud, to efforts at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aimed at thwarting payday loan fraud.

More often than not it’s the companies that benefit from the shenanigans that are found to be behind gamesmanship like this, since more than a few DC policy shops now offer this kind of greasy bullshit as an added value service for clients hoping to shape or influence public perception and government policy. The goal is usually to not just to create bogus support for bad policy, but to help undermine trust in the public comment process–often the only chance many Americans have to voice their thoughts on these decisions. Using Russian email addresses in bulk certainly would go a long way toward achieving that goal.

In the case of net neutrality, whoever was behind the fake comments was obviously keen on trying to downplay and discredit the millions of bipartisan Americans pissed off by the FCC’s blatant handout to giant ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Charter (Spectrum). Numerous investigations (at the GAO and NY AG, for example) and next February’s net neutrality court battle are likely to, sooner or later, shed light on who carried out this operation, who funded it, and why Pai’s FCC is trying so hard to keep most of these investigations from getting to the truth.

Filed Under: ajit pai, bad reporting, comments, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality, russia

FCC Commissioner Accuses Her Own Agency Of A Net Neutrality Cover Up

Legal Issues

from the ill-communication dept

We’ve long discussed how the Pai FCC’s net neutrality repeal was plagued with millions of fraudulent comments, many of which were submitted by a bot pulling names from a hacked database of some kind. Millions of ordinary folks (like myself) had their identities used to support Pai’s unpopular plan, as did several Senators. Numerous journalists have submitted FOIA requests for more data (server logs, IP addresses, API data, anything) that might indicate who was behind the fraudulent comments, who may have bankrolled them, and what the Pai FCC knew about it.

But the Pai FCC has repeatedly tried to tap dance around FOIA requests, leading to several journalists (including those at the New York Times and Buzzfeed) suing the FCC. Despite the Times’ lawyers best efforts to work with the FCC to tailor the nature of their requests over a period of months, the agency continues to hide behind FOIA exemptions that don’t really apply here: namely FOIA exemption 6 (related to protecting privacy) and 7E (related to protecting agency security and law enforcement activity).

And while the Times and Buzzfeed had appealed the FCC’s ruling, the FCC this week released a memorandum and order formally denying those requests. In it, the FCC doubles down on the claims that it’s simply blocking the release of this data because it’s super worried about the privacy of FCC commenters (though again, if you actually read the Times lawsuit, you’ll note the FCC was utterly inflexible in terms of narrowing down the scope of requests).

FCC lawyers also try to make the amusing claim that the press really doesn’t need this data because there’s other investigations (including one at the GAO) trying to get to the bottom of the scandal:

“Confessore proffers a putative public interest in understanding the integrity of the Commission?s comment process. This question, however, is being or has already been examined by other press outlets,51 Commission staff, and the Government Accountability Office, among others. Confessore has not provided us with any reason to believe that his review of this data would significantly advance any public interest beyond the investigations that are already underway.”

Of course this is the same FCC that has also actively blocked law enforcement efforts to get to the bottom of the scandal, refusing nine inquiries from the NY AG over a period of five months for additional data. So while the Pai FCC breathlessly claims it’s all about transparency and integrity, their actions on this subject (and that whole fake DDOS attack they concocted in a weird bid to downplay public backlash) tend to undermine these claims.

Meanwhile, Pai’s fellow Commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, has certainly taken off the gloves in recent weeks. She hit Twitter and issued a statement that effectively accused her own agency of engaging in a cover up of fraudulent activity:

Her full statement (pdf) is also worth a read, and doesn’t pull any punches:

“Instead of providing news organizations with the information requested, in this decision the FCC decides to hide behind Freedom of Information Act exemptions and thwart investigative journalism. In doing so, the agency asserts an overbroad claim about the security of its public commenting system that sounds no more credible than its earlier and disproven claim that the system was the subject of distributed denial of service attack. It appears this agency is trying to prevent anyone from looking too closely at the mess it made of net neutrality. It is hiding what it knows about the fraud in our record and it is preventing an honest account of its many problems from seeing the light of day.

Pai’s justification for the FOIA blockade tries very heavily to insist this is all just unfair partisan gamesmanship. But at this juncture his FCC’s record when it comes to transparency, blatant telecom sector cronyism, and bizarre scandals has pretty much been established. This is an agency that not only used bullshit telecom lobbyist data to undermine policies that had broad, bipartisan public support, it has been rocked by scandal after scandal, fought tooth and nail against real transparency on numerous fronts, and has refused to give any real weight to the will of the tech-savvy public.

Pai comes off as an unwavering ideologue who truly seems to believe he’s doing an incredible job of “unleashing innovation” despite every shred of evidence to the contrary (not unlike the man who appointed him to the position). Unfortunately for Pai, whose post-FCC political ambitions couldn’t be any more obvious, his legacy will likely be the giant middle finger he’s given to tech-savvy Millennials. As for the fake comments specifically, they’re likely to play a starring role in next February’s net neutrality lawsuits, which will look to prove the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act by ignoring the will of the public as it rushed to give AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast a sloppy kiss for the ages.

Filed Under: ajit pai, comments, fake comments, fcc, foia, jessica rosenworcel, net neutrality, public records, transparency