TECH

USA: FCC president admits that Russia has interfered in the public debate on the neutrality of the internet

Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), admitted on Wednesday, December 5, that Russia interfered in the process of implementing the new rules that will govern the principles of Internet neutrality in the United States.
He explained that the interference was felt during the period in which the agency received public comments on the debate that ended with the decision to revoke the principles that prevented internet providers from dictating the speed and quality of access to it. At that time, more than 22 million comments were received.
Last October an investigation was opened to gauge the existence of fraudulent activities in this process.
At a hearing convened in the framework of this same investigation, Father Ajit confirmed that about 500 thousand comments were linked to Russian email addresses. About 99% of the comments were against revocation.
Note that in May of last year, the FCC website was down after comedian and host John Oliver appealed to the public to flood the authority's platform with comments during an issue of his Last Week Tonight program. The agency explained the situation with a DDoS attack and never related it to a peak in the influx of comments. In August, however, an inspector revealed there was no evidence of any such attack.
The investigation, which is still under way, has concluded that more than half of the 22 million comments come from temporary, duplicate or fake emails. According to a recent study, conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 17.4% of the comments were genuine. Sapo