
FCC admits it was never actually hacked - placatedmayhem
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/06/fcc-admits-it-was-never-actually-hacked/
======
fphhotchips
"I am deeply disappointed that the FCC’s former [CIO], who was hired by the
prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate
information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American
people. "

The first envelope is open. Next up: reorganisation.

~~~
binomialxenon
No admission of responsibility of course, just scapegoating. I find it highly
likely that Pai and his like-minded cronies were in on this the whole time.

~~~
wavefunction
Why would he have posted such trollish pictures of himself if he weren't?

He got real serious suddenly when that nutter threatened his family.

~~~
covercash
A real-life consequence for abhorrent behavior? I’m all for that. Maybe not
quite that extreme, but I think public shaming of these people and their
friends/family is acceptable. They don’t seem to respond to anything else
these days.

~~~
antt
A lesson the political and billionaire class have not learned is that when
inequality gets as bad as what we have today the mob gets actual pitchforks
and assassins start throwing bombs in your carriages and shooting at your
motorcade.

Repression follows, more assassinations happen, and then before you know it
Serbian meddling in the Austro-Hungarian succession starts WWI.

This is not limited to the countries ending in -ia in Central/Eastern Europe
[0] [1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bombings)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing)

~~~
oblio
It's not inequality. It's almost never pure inequality. It's poverty going
below a specific threshold, usually hunger or homelessness.

And when was there a movement like this in the US post-prosperity (WW2)? Your
links are from 100 years ago.

~~~
phobosdeimos
Things got pretty bad during the Vietnam war. There is a reason why the draft
was abolished.

~~~
oblio
Wasn't that because of the draft, though? That counts as "major" since you're
being shipped off to be killed. But how likely is a new Vietnam? US
involvement in wars doesn't require a draft anymore...

My point, inequality itself is rarely the trigger. It needs to pass a limit,
usually threatening livelihood. And it needs to be super widespread (think
20%+ of the population).

------
krisroadruck
"Because it wasn’t a hack, it seems that the comment-filing system, though
recently revamped, needs yet another fresh coat of paint to handle the kind of
volume it saw during the net neutrality repeal."

Or as an alternative, maybe don't shove through legislation that's so wildly
unpopular with the american citizens that the entire internet comes crashing
down on you in protest. Just a thought.

~~~
dlp211
Nit: it's not legislation, it's regulation in the FCCs purview. The reason
this matters is because it is likely going to take Congressional legislation
to get net neutrality now, which means electing (mostly) Democrats.

~~~
mkhpalm
If only it were as simple as voting for 1 of 2 parties.

[https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?cycle=2018...](https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?cycle=2018&ind=B09)

Neither party appears to be turning down money from the opponents of net
neutrality. It feels more like everybody takes the money and the rest is just
politics and propaganda.

~~~
StudentStuff
Yep, you have the corporatist Democrats and the corporatist Republicans, both
of which are happy to collude if it makes the companies that own them happy. I
wish we would just make our politicians wear their owner's logos.

~~~
pssflops
Sounds like the outfits worn in Idiocracy.

------
mehrdadn
I'm confused, where did they say they were "hacked"? When I follow the links I
get here [1] where they said they were DDoS'd, not hacked. Even TechCrunch's
old article [2] doesn't say the FCC was hacked.

[1] [https://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-cio-denial-
servic...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-cio-denial-service-
attack-fcc-comment-system)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/the-fccs-comment-system-
ta...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/the-fccs-comment-system-targeted-by-
ddos-attacks-during-filing-period-for-net-neutrality/)

~~~
stonogo
Here you go:
[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344764A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-344764A1.pdf)

It's linked from that page you posted.

I guess you can be pedantic about the term "hacked," but they claimed their
site was deliberately rendered unavailable to commenters by multiple
attackers. In the common parlance, deliberately breaking computer shit is
called hacking.

It may save unneeded stress to make peace with the fact that words can mean
one thing to a specialist and something else to all the other native speakers
of the language.

~~~
mehrdadn
> Here you go. It's linked from that page you posted.

Uhm, yes, I have eyes, thank you. I think you can assume HNers are generally
not obtuse enough to link to a nearly-blank page saying "Statement by FCC" and
miss 3 glaringly obvious links referring to the actual statement. I was,
indeed, referring to that statement. The very fact that their news release
seemed to be missing "hack" or anything equivalent to it is exactly what I was
referring to.

The difference between "attacked" vs. "hacked" isn't "pedantry" any more than
the difference between "arrested" and "convicted" is pedantry. Being "hacked"
means your system's security was breached, not that you were merely
"attacked". Most of the press cares about being responsible with their choice
of words, and you really should too. Nobody would say Google or HN or any
other site was "hacked" the moment it was DDoS'd. Being hacked requires a
security breach, and nowhere that I can see did the FCC claim there was such a
thing. So unless they said this elsewhere, this is a recklessly irresponsible
choice of words.

~~~
stonogo
> Being "hacked" means your system's security was breached,

Nah. They claimed the site was rendered unfit for purpose by malicious
attackers. If you don't think denial of service is a security event, you'd
better start writing lots of angry letters to MITRE, because we need to revoke
about 90% of the CVEs that have been issued over the years.

I'm not sure how to phrase this politely, but you are not the arbiter of
language, TechCrunch is not beholden to any higher a linguistic standard than
anyone else, and the word hack has been associated with DDoS attacks for years
and years (a small sampling of references follow).

I don't particularly care about the FCC or this event, but this seems like a
really strange hill to die on. Please note that I am not suggesting that you
actually intend to expire on a topological elevation gradient; this is merely
a figure of speech that means something else to some people (cf
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hill_to_die_on](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hill_to_die_on)).

"This class of hack, known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack,
has been around for a while.": [http://fortune.com/2016/10/22/ddos-attack-
hacker-profit/](http://fortune.com/2016/10/22/ddos-attack-hacker-profit/)

"What is a DDoS Hack and How Do You Avoid Them?" (video):
[https://www.wired.com/2016/01/hacker-lexicon-what-are-dos-
an...](https://www.wired.com/2016/01/hacker-lexicon-what-are-dos-and-ddos-
attacks/)

"DDoS hack attack targets Church of Scientology":
[https://www.scmagazine.com/ddos-hack-attack-targets-
church-o...](https://www.scmagazine.com/ddos-hack-attack-targets-church-of-
scientology/article/554145/)

"Hack Attack Gums Up Authorize.Net": [https://www.wired.com/2004/09/hack-
attack-gums-up-authorize-...](https://www.wired.com/2004/09/hack-attack-gums-
up-authorize-net/)

~~~
vlan0
You highlighted an issue in all of mainstream media's use of the term
"hacking". They are extremely liberal with their use.

It's very tongue-in-cheek to claim an organization has been hacked because
someone(s) launched a DDoS.

It's like someone claiming they perform their own auto repairs, but in
actuality all they do is fill the windshield fluid and replace their air
filter.

------
InterestBazinga
Are there going to be any consequences for this? If no, then it is such a
betrayal of trust.

~~~
xmichael999
If you read about Steve Bannon, his plan for years is really to have people
lose faith in government agencies and have them thought of as garbage, and
then ultimately shut down. I'm not sure this is some great conspiracy or just
a bunch of scumbags at work here, but like I say there are major well financed
efforts to actually make the FCC, EPA, etc look stupid, and appear to be run
by idiots. Appointing incompetent people to them, is the plan by some of these
folks like Bannon.

~~~
Avshalom
Invoking Steve Bannon is unnecessary: "losing faith in government" has been
the Republican Party goal since Nixon.

~~~
tasty_freeze
"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

President Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Arguably a misquotation, probably misleading absent the context, and
definitely an incomplete quotation.

Speaking narrowly and specifically about the economic crisis and stagflation
of the late 70s:

 _In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
government is the problem. From time to time we 've been tempted to believe
that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that
government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the
people._

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The surrounding context doesn't really change/clarify that core message very
much.

~~~
WillPostForFood
It does, it is saying the government had been the cause of the economic crisis
of the time, not that it was generally the problem of all things.

------
bsparker
So does this have anything to do with the fake comments (left in my name):
[http://fortune.com/2017/11/29/fcc-and-net-neutrality-
check-t...](http://fortune.com/2017/11/29/fcc-and-net-neutrality-check-to-see-
if-your-name-was-used-for-fake-comments/)

~~~
fourthark
Yeah, I always assumed they were unintentionally DDoS'd by the bots spamming
fake comments. Which anyone non-technical could honestly but inaccurately
describe as "being hacked".

~~~
yebyen
Anyone non-technical who was not directly involved with the deed, perhaps. It
is not at all honest to say "we were hacked" if the truth is actually "we
hacked ourselves."

Honestly (and of course, I don't have anything concrete to back this up with)
I'm quite sure the truth is "we hacked ourselves, maintaining just enough
degrees of separation so as to preserve plausible deniability..."

~~~
fourthark
Huh? There were plenty of interests who would have been willing to pay someone
to generate a lot of fake anti-net-neutrality "opinions".

Why assume that the FCC stuffed their own mailbox?

~~~
yebyen
Why else would they have made up this ridiculous story about being hacked?
You're much too charitable.

~~~
fourthark
They only claimed they were DDoS'd, it's the media that used the word
"hacked". Maybe we can agree that they might not have been able to tell the
difference between bot comments and DDoS, or did not want to acknowledge that
difference.

~~~
yebyen
Sure. Somebody made up their mind what they wanted to do, they were required
by law to seek public comments.

That 98% of unique comments and an overwhelming majority of public discussion
were on one side of the issue, and they were then overwhelmed by obviously
fake comments on the other side of the issue very conveniently allowed Pai to
say "the results of the comment period are invalid, so we're going to
disregard the comments and do what we had already planned to do anyway"

Given the track record of this administration so far, I feel pretty
comfortable extrapolating from limited data and drawing conclusions that would
not hold up in a court of law. Unless these folks are suddenly becoming much
smarter than they look, chances are this will either be proven soon, or more
likely swept under the next larger scandal.

Hopefully we can also agree that they were not going to listen to the public
and knew before the comment period had even opened what they would do, and
wouldn't be stopped. But in the realm of things we can prove, they definitely
did not want to acknowledge the difference between what happened and "what
happened." It played strongly to their advantage and successfully muddied the
waters in furtherance of their stated goals.

------
pkilgore
Was there ever any doubt? What a joke ( and waste of time and resources ). At
this point I'm surprised Pai bothered to release a statement.

~~~
krisroadruck
Just face-saving. Trying to get out in front of the report and frame the issue
rather than let others frame it.

------
woodandsteel
I have been around a long time, and have observed many different presidential
administrations. Some I liked and some I disliked. But I have never seen one
that lied one tenth as often as the present one.

------
wnevets
Of course it wasn't but the damage has been done.

------
mrfusion
Why don’t people trust institutions anymore?

~~~
smolder
Because the institutions were corrupted by people who don't want instutions
telling them not to be corrupt.

------
craftyguy
The FCC should be disbanded and replaced with a new regulatory body that is
elected by the people (either directly or by elected representation).

Even though they could do good, and may have in the past, the lack of actual
accountability for their actions means that it's too easy to do bad. They're
not directly elected, so even the tiny shred of accountability that elected
officials generally have is not there. If they can flat out lie to the public
and get away with it, why do they exist and why should they continue to exist?

The justification for the existence of a government organization should _not_
be based on the possibilities of good they _might_ do, but it should be based
on the unchecked bad they could (and will eventually) do.

~~~
monocasa
Don't fall into their trap of "look how terrible government is (when officials
are actively trying to run it into the ground)".

Fix the issues with officials lying, rather than throwing the baby out with
the bathwater.

~~~
jessaustin
FCC does nothing that citizens need or want done. For it to be shuttered would
harm only those who have invested billions in the fake "assets" that FCC
invented and must constantly police.

It isn't the 1930s anymore. Modern radio technology could enable a much more
complete utilization of spectrum. FCC's primary mission at this time is to
delay that happy day as long as possible. "Happy" because with true
competition, the consumer would forget that net neutrality was ever anything a
government agency needed to enforce. Don't like how your WISP is handling your
traffic? Just switch to one of the other 25 WISPs in your area.

It's true that if FCC were eliminated to the general benefit of the nation,
curious citizens would wonder what else could be eliminated. Should we feel
sorry for any organization unable to justify its own purpose and actions?

~~~
alsetmusic
> FCC does nothing that citizens need or want done.

I wanted net neutrality the first time it was implemented. I remember being
excited about a few other regulations that the Wheeler FCC implemented.

~~~
jessaustin
They "implemented" it a year before that president left office, knowing the
next administration would roll it back. It didn't even actually get out of the
courts, so the implementation never affected anything. A fairly cheap signal
of virtue...

~~~
monocasa
That's a mischaracterization of what happened.

Traditional telephone telecoms were always common carriers under Title II, and
that applied to internet over dialup during the 90s. When broadband meant that
internet connectivity was now being delivered via other medium, the FCC
enforced what we now call net neutrality via a lighter regulatory scheme.
Verizon ironically sued to get the courts to say that the FCC couldn't enforce
the rules in a lighter scheme and therefore had to declare the new internet
connectivity infrastructure to be full Title II common carriers to apply any
of those rules to them. That court case ended in 2014, and so the FCC followed
the court recommendation to apply the rules the were already enforcing.

Long story short: there was never really a time with both consumer internet
connectivity and no net neutrality, despite the right wing talking points that
this is some new thing.

~~~
jessaustin
Thread parent specifically credited Wheeler. I assumed that was for what
Wheeler did in 2015? In my opinion (of course everyone is welcome to her own!)
that action was calculated for reversal. In fact the whole "our backs are to
the wall since VZN sued us" kabuki performance was planned years in advance.
Big telcos are plugged into the parts of USA government that don't face
reelection. They can bring extraordinary pressure to bear on judges and
bureaucrats. Nobody in that system wants thousands of wildcat WISPs dotting
the countryside.

I agree that the AM talk goofballs are full of shit on most things they say
about the internet.

