FCC will be put on the spot to prove claims of pro-net neutrality hackers taking down system

Remember that phantom cyber attack that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai insisted really happened, instead of acknowledging that the FCC's creaky system was simply overwhelmed by the response of the citizenry in support of net neutrality? To this day, Pai has not provided any evidence to back up his claim that the FCC's system was hacked. Pai now is being put on the spot to provide the proof.

In August, Gizmodo reported that Senator Brian Schatz and Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. had submitted a request to the GAO asking it to investigate the FCC’s cybersecurity standards, its handling of the alleged DDoS attack and whether or not it is complying with best practices as determined by the Department of Homeland Security. Per Ars Technica, the process to start that investigation now appears to be under way, though it may not actually commence for several months.

“The work, since it was accepted, is now in the queue, but won’t get underway for several months when staff become available,” the GAO told Ars Technica. “Once it does start, then one of the first steps will be to determine the exact scope of what it will cover and the methodology we’ll use.”

There were some 21 million comments about Pai’s proposal to gut the open internet rules and end net neutrality, including hundreds of thousands of identical anti-open internet comments. Those comments, Pai decided, would be included in the tally. So a pro-net neutrality comment flood is a “hack” and anti-net neutrality astro-turfing is a-okay.