The FCC Is Full of Shit. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission fired back against negative coverage of its response to a public records request filed by Gizmodo in May. Media reports claiming that the FCC lacks written documentation of its analysis of the May 7- 8 non- traditional DDo. S attack that took place against our electronic comment filing system are categorically false,” FCC spokesman Brian Hart said in a press release. Hart’s statements were circulated to reporters shortly after Gizmodo reached out to the agency regarding unpublished comments by Senator Ron Wyden, who, in an email, had expressed disapproval over the agency’s handling of the alleged cyberattacks that overwhelmed its public comment website this spring.

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The FCC website faced a barrage of traffic on May 8 after comedian John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, asked his viewers to submit comments to the agency in support of Obama- era rules enforcing net neutrality. The regulations make it illegal for ISPs to block or slow traffic to certain websites and services.

In his statement, Hart blasted what he called “inaccurate” and “misleading reports” about the alleged cyberattack. On Wednesday, Gizmodo reported the agency’s refusal to release more than 2.

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Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Further, the FCC stated that it had no records related to an analysis being performed on its systems during the attack, seemingly contradicting previous remarks from one of its staff the following day. Despite Hart’s statement Thursday, Gizmodo’s report did not claim that the FCC “lacks written documentation” of the attack—only that the FCC had stated, in writing, that it held no records of any kind related to the so- called “analysis” cited by its official in the immediate aftermath of the incident. According to a letter later written by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, the “peak activity triggering the comment system’s unavailability” began on May 7, at around 1. ET. On May 8, at about 2pm, the agency published a statement in which Chief Information Officer Dr. David Bray said, “Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial- of- service attacks (DDo.

S).” (Emphasis ours)On May 2. Gizmodo filed its FOIA request, a section of which sought out copies of “any records related to the FCC ‘analysis’ (cited in Dr. Bray’s statement) that concluded a DDo. S attack had taken place.” In a letter on Wednesday, the agency responded: “IT staff have confirmed there are no records responsive to this portion of the request. The analysis referred to stemmed from real time observation and feedback by Commission IT staff and did not result in written documentation.”Taken at its word, the FCC’s statement means that for a period of about 1. IT department wrote a single email or memo, nor did they take down any notes of any kind about the cyberattack that, according to Chairman Pai, caused a malicious 3. Watch Can`T Buy Me Love Dailymotion. The result,” he said, “was that new human users were blocked from visiting the comment filing system.” Gizmodo did not simply request a copy of the “analysis” referenced by Dr.

Bray, however; citing the federal law, it had asked the agency to turn over any records even “related to” the analysis of which Bray spoke. In its statement on Thursday, FCC spokesman Brian Hart said, “Given that the Commission’s IT professionals were in the midst of addressing the attack on May 8, that analysis was not reduced to writing. However, subsequent analysis, once the incident had concluded, was put in writing.” Presumably, this “subsequent analysis” is in someway “related to” information that the agency’s employees would have gleaned while being otherwise too engrossed in cyberwarfare to jot anything down. Prior to the statement by FCC’s Hart on Thursday afternoon, Senator Ron Wyden had stated in an email that the agency’s response to Gizmodo’s FOIA request raised “legitimate questions about whether the agency is being truthful when it claims a DDo. S attack knocked its commenting system offline.” The Oregon senator said it was critical that the agency produce evidence of the attack, if only so independent experts could verify and learn something from it. He continued: “If the FCC did suffer a DDo. S attack and yet created no written materials about it, that would be deeply irresponsible and cast doubt on how the FCC could possibly prevent future attacks.

On the other hand, if FCC is playing word games to avoid responding to FOIA requests, it would clearly violate Chairman Ajit Pai’s pledge to increase transparency at the FCC.”So as not to mislead or confuse the FCC, Gizmodo elaborated at some length about what it meant when it said it was requesting “records” related to the attack: “Gizmodo seeks all responsive records regardless of format, medium, or physical characteristics. In conducting your search, please understand the terms ‘records,’ ‘communications,’ and ‘documents’ in their broadest sense, to include any written, typed, recorded, graphic, printed, or audio material of any kind. We seek records of any kind, including electronic records, audiotapes, videotapes, and photographs, as well as letters, emails, facsimiles, telephone messages, voice mail messages and transcripts, notes, or minutes of any meetings, telephone conversations or discussions. Our request includes any attachments to these records. No category of material should be omitted from search, collection, and production.”What’s more, the records related to Bray’s so- called “analysis” were only one of six categories of material sought.

The request further included any agency emails referencing “DDo. S,” “astroturfing,” “spam,” and “net neutrality,” in addition to any related calendar entries, visitor logs, meeting minutes, orders, memoranda, or written views concerning the FCC’s comment system.

Also requested were all records related to a May 9th letter authored by Senators Wyden and Brian Schatz regarding the attack. Yet, somehow the FCC could not produce a single document from the day the cyberattack is said to have occurred.

It released one email from a reporter asking for a comment about Schatz and Wyden’s letter. Another short one concerning the same letter between two FCC staffers was entirely redacted, because its disclosure would, the agency said, expose its “decision making process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency’s ability to perform its functions.” (The FCC believes that the public would react poorly if details emerged about how it planned to respond to the senator’s questions.)The FCC’s refusal to produce records of any true relevance reflects pressure from the agency’s upper echelon to limit the disclosure of information about the incident to a handful of public statements. Its justifications for concealing more than 2. FOIA records run the gamut of the federal statute’s permitted exemptions: many of the documents are said to contain either “trade secrets” or “privileged and confidential” information.

Others were withheld because doing otherwise, the FCC asserted, might reveal “discussion of the Commission’s IT infrastructure and countermeasures.” Although the law requires the agency’s attorneys to review each document individually, and only redact the portions of the text that truly deserve to be withheld, more than 9. It would be hard for a government agency to do more to give off the impression that it was engaged in a cover up. That’s troubling given the rise of questions over the FCC’s integrity.

In fact, reports emerging in the wake of the cyberattack suggest that the FCC public comment system is already wholly compromised. Spambots are said to have inundated the website with fake letters, according to multiple sources. Hundreds of thousands of identical messages can be viewed there—some containing the names and addresses of Americans who, when contacted by reporters, have claimed that their identities must’ve been stolen.