FCC chairman Ajit Pai has been trying his darnedest to stymie any and all attempts by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from getting to the bottom of suspected massive fraud perpetrated on thousands of New Yorkers, whose accounts were used to file fake anti-net neutrality comments during the comment period. Schneiderman wants to find out who and how this happened. That’s one of those jobs that an attorney general is supposed to do in a functioning democracy. One of two Democrats on the FCC commission, Jessica Rosenworcel has been critical of every craven move on the part of Verizon shill Ajit Pai. According to Gizmodo, the FCC’s general counsel sent a letter to Schneiderman on Thursday challenging Schneiderman’s jurisdiction and arguing against allowing anyone to find out exactly what kind of fraud has been perpetuated by unknown bad actors.
On Thursday, Thomas Johnson, the FCC’s general counsel, sent a letter to Schneiderman. In it, he writes that the FCC has no intention of complying with requests for information that Schneiderman contends is critical to uncovering who sent the fake comments, which may have used the names and addresses of millions of American citizens without their consent.
Commissioner Rosenworcel gave her statement to Gizmodo about this turn of events.
“In a letter dated yesterday that was handed to press but is unavailable on the FCC’s website, the agency refuses to assist New York Attorney General Schneiderman’s investigation into the identity theft of a million consumers in the FCC’s net neutrality record. This letter shows the FCC’s sheer contempt for public input and unreasonable failure to support integrity in its process. To put it simply, there is evidence in the FCC’s files that fraud has occurred, and the FCC is telling law enforcement and victims of identity theft that it is not going to help. Moreover, the FCC refuses to look into how nearly half a million comments came from Russian sources. Failure to investigate this corrupted record undermines our process for seeking public input in the digital age.”
Commissioner Rosenworcel has been scathing in her criticisms of the Republican-led FCC under chairman Pai over the past year, and continues to be a voice of reason embedded inside of this big telecom madhouse.