John,
BREAKING NEWS: The New York Attorney General’s office has announced that after a multi-year investigation they have proof that the nation’s largest broadband companies funded a massive campaign of fraud that flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with fake comments to influence the agency’s net neutrality proceeding.1,2
We’re not surprised by today’s news—we’ve always known that the vast majority of people support net neutrality, and the only way Big Telecom companies could win was by spending millions of dollars lobbying and lying. But we’re also not going to let this go.
We’re calling for these broadband executives to face criminal charges for funding the fraudulent campaign, and demanding the FCC immediately restore net neutrality. Chip in to help right this wrong.
CHIP IN NOW
Fight for the Future was the first group to uncover suspicious looking comments about net neutrality back in 2017.3,4
At the time, we created Comcastroturf.com to help people find out if their personal information (or the personal information of deceased family members) had been stolen and used to submit a fake comment to the FCC opposing net neutrality. Comcast even sent us a cease and desist notice in an attempt to censor the site (which we fought and won.).5
This would have just been a single story of suspected foul play had we not pursued it to the very end. We kept it in the press, we pushed for oversight, and we found as many people whose information had been stolen as possible (one of our campaigners even rode her bike around the Tampa area, knocking on doors of people we suspected may have been impersonated).
Our work resulted in thousands of people sending messages to Ajit Pai and Congress to investigate these fraudulent comments, as well as bipartisan letters from Congress and a Government Accountability Office review, and ultimately this confirmation of fraud.6,7,8
We’re going to keep fighting to hold the corporations who perpetrated this fraud accountable. Can you make a donation today to keep fighting Big Telecom companies?
Now we’re calling on the FCC to immediately reverse the fraudulent and unpopular repeal of net neutrality, given that we know the process was irrefutably tainted by a corporate funded fraud campaign.
And to make sure these corporations, executives, and former high-ranking public officials are held accountable for this blatant attack on the democratic process we're looking at pursuing legal actions and submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to get the names of everyone involved and the lists of other processes that they subverted.
We will not let this go, and we will fight to make it untenable for people with power to subvert our democratic processes like this again.
You’ve been with us fighting to uphold our rights in the digital age. Now you can be with us as we win against Big Cable and Telecom, win back net neutrality, and make sure the people who were behind this corporate funded fraud lose big. Donate now.
Together,
The team at Fight for the Future ❤️
Footnotes:
1. New York Attorney General: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/oag-fakecommentsreport.pdf
2. New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/technology/internet-providers-fake-comments-net-neutrality-new-york.html
3. Fight for the Future: https://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/160771385833/the-fcc-cannot-move-forward-until-it-investigates
4. TechDirt: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190221/11095741645/investigators-reporters-close-origins-those-fake-net-neutrality-comments.shtml
5. Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3w9vj/comcast-is-trying-to-censor-a-site-that-claims-comcast-is-committing-fraud
6. Fight for the Future: https://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/161059082913/victims-whose-stolen-names-and-addresses-were-used
7. Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/23/two-senators-say-their-identities-were-stolen-in-fake-net-neutrality-comments-to-the-fcc/
8. Tech Crunch: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/23/the-gao-will-investigate-potential-fraud-in-the-fccs-net-neutrality-comments-in-5-months/
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.
