In a mail sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Acting FBI Executive Director Andrew McCabe this week, Rep. Frank Pallone requested the pair to review reports that stolen identities were used to post comments to the Commission. He also noted a Blog article showed nearly half a million alike comments were posted by an unknown party. Pallone, who is a ranking person of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the statements were “troubling.”
“These parties may be trying to influence national policy by publicly distorting the views of innocent victims,” he wrote. “Federal law forbids knowingly giving any materially false statements or description in any matter inside the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch … I request you to take swift action to examine who may be behind these comments and, if appropriate under relevant federal law and regulations, prosecute the people behind these deceitful comments.”
Pallone’s letter follows an example from the victims themselves to the FCC last period asking the Commission to eliminate all fraudulent comments and inform others who may have been impacted.
“We are concerned about reports that indicate you have no methods to remove these fraudulent comments from the public Website. Whoever is behind that stole our names and addresses, publicly exposed our private info without our approval, and used our names to file a political record we did not sign onto. Hundreds of thousands of Americans may have been deceived, too,” the victims wrote. “All peculiar authorities must be informed immediately and the FCC must publish any and all information the agency has pertaining to the organization or person behind these fraudulent comments.”
The FCC’s push to roll back the Title II class for telecom service providers that work as the underpinning of net neutrality has been fraught with discussing issues.
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