NY AG says the FCC has ignored multiple requests for logs and records amid NY's investigation of the flood of fake net neutrality comments to the federal agency
otherwise we get service bundle plans like in Portugal and Australia http://continuations.com/... http://twitter.com/... David Beard / @dabeard : How can @FCC ditch #NetNeutrality when entire FCC comment process corrupted by 100,000s of fake accounts? NY attorney general demands FCC information. http://twitter.com/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : Statement from NCSC (defensive arm of GCHQ) on the Uber data breach: working with UK's National Crime Agency and ICO to investigate how it impacted people in the UK pic.twitter.com/Lv5nRCVU1M Nikhil Pahwa / @nixxin : The US needs to learn from India on #NetNeutrality . Increase competition among ISPs and keep access neutral. We've done that and with reliance jio launching, rates have dropped, bandwidth gone up, data consumption skyrocketed Jess Dweck / @thedweck : If you're tired of calling Congress to beg them not to destroy health care, congrats, now you can call to beg them not to destroy the internet http://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
New York's attorney general opened an investigation into the flood of fake net neutrality comments filed with the FCC and says the agency has repeatedly ignored requests for the logs and records needed to trace them. The standoff escalated within weeks: the FCC formally refused to hand over any data in December 2017, and the AG asked the agency to delay its net neutrality vote because up to 2 million comments had used stolen identities.
The arc closes years later with the AG's office finding that roughly 18 million of the 22 million-plus comments were fake, including 8.5 million funded by the largest US ISPs — which makes the FCC's early stonewalling the pivotal moment when the inquiry could have shaped the vote.
First-order effects
- The FCC proceeds toward its net neutrality vote on a public-comment record it knows is under fraud investigation, while the New York AG's office is denied the server logs needed to identify who submitted the fake comments.
Second-order effects
- With the agency refusing cooperation, accountability shifts to state-level litigation and congressional oversight, and the ISPs later identified as funding millions of fake comments face reputational and legal exposure they avoided at the time.
Third-order effects
- If a federal agency can decline to substantiate its own rulemaking record, the notice-and-comment process itself loses evidentiary weight — pushing challenges to major rules toward courts and state attorneys general rather than the agency's docket.
The trend: Federal rulemaking comment systems are becoming a contested battlefield between astroturf campaigns and state-level investigators, with agencies' willingness to disclose their own records deciding which side wins.