Considered opinionRussians are hacking our public-commenting system, too

By Jessica Rosenworcel

What do Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), deceased actress Patty Duke, a 13-year-old from upstate New York, and a 96-year-old veteran from Southern California have in common? They appear to have filed comments in the net neutrality record at the Federal Communications Commission. That ought to mean they went online, submitted their names and addresses, and typed out their thoughts about Internet regulatory policy.

But Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, writes in the Washington Post that appearances can be deceiving. In fact, each of these individuals — along with two million others — had their identities stolen and used to file fake comments.

Rosenworcel continues:

These fake comments were not the only unnerving thing in the FCC net neutrality record. In the course of its deliberations on the future of Internet openness, the agency logged about half a million comments sent from Russian email addresses. It received nearly eight million comments from email domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com with almost identical wording.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case. Researchers, journalists, and public servants have found a wide range of fake comments and stolen identities in the public proceedings of the Labor Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is a serious problem. Administrative decisions made in Washington affect Americans’ day-to-day lives and future. They involve everything from Internet access to retirement planning to the availability of loans to the energy sources that power our homes and businesses.

Since 1946, the Administrative Procedure Act has required agencies making decisions on major policy changes to open their process to the public.

….

This system served us well for decades, but it is growing creaky and showing its age. In proceedings at the FCC and elsewhere, it is apparent that the public is increasingly shut out of decision-making by the fraud that is flooding public channels for comment. And it’s a good bet that this is only going to get worse. The mechanization and weaponization of the comment-filing process have only just begun.

No one said digital age democracy was going to be easy. But it’s time to brace ourselves and strengthen our civic infrastructure to withstand what is underway. This is true across government. You can find disturbing parallels between the flood of fake comments in regulatory proceedings and the barrage of posts on social media that was part of a now-infamous campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. In short, there is a concerted effort to exploit our openness. It deserves a concerted response.

….

In January, the Government Accountability Office announced that it would be reviewing the “extent and pervasiveness of fraud and the misuse of American identities during the federal rulemaking process.” The letter noted the investigation could not begin for five months. That’s a start. But it’s not enough.

We need a lot more investigating, including from the Justice Department and the FBI. The sheer volume of fraud suggests a systemic effort to corrupt the process by which the public participates in some of the biggest decisions made in Washington. That deserves attention — and a fix. If we do this right, we can do more than rid our public records of comments from dead people and Russia, stolen identities and bots. We can find a way to give all Americans — no matter who they are or where they live — a fighting chance at making Washington listen to what they think.

Read the article: Jessica Rosenworcel, “Russians are hacking our public-commenting system, too,” Washington Post (6 March 2018)