The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told senators Thursday he waited several months before correcting his claim about a suspected cyberattack during his agency’s “net neutrality” debate because doing so may have hindered an ongoing investigation.
The FCC’s online public comment portal crashed in May 2017 as the agency was considering its controversial decision to repeal Obama-era “net neutrality” rules. The FCC was quick to assert that a coordinated cyberattack had prevented people from registering their opinions about the change.
But an FCC Office of Inspector General report released in August could not substantiate the agency’s allegations.
Chairman Ajit Pai told Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Thursday he had initial doubts about claims of a coordinated cyberattack because the technical snafu happened shortly after HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver called on “net neutrality” supporters to inundate the agency’s website.
“My assumption was that it was John Oliver’s viewers,” Pai said during the hearing.
Pai said he ultimately relied on conclusions drawn by the FCC’s former chief information officer and other information technology consultants, who were “99 percent confident that this was external folks deliberately trying to tie up the server.”
Pai has been heavily criticized for that claim by experts and stakeholders who questioned the plausibility of the allegations. Pai said Thursday he was made aware of the OIG’s findings in January, but said nothing publicly because the watchdog had asked for confidentiality.
“Once we knew what the inclusions were [in the OIG’s report], it was very hard to stay quiet. We wanted the story to get out,” Pai said Thursday. “I made the judgment that we had to adhere to the OIG’s request, even though I knew we’d be falsely attacked for having done something inappropriately.”
Pai’s appearance before congressional investigators drew ire from digital rights advocacy groups like Fight for the Future.
“Today Pai admitted he knew that the alleged cyberattack was bogus months ago,” Fight for the Future’s Executive Director Sarah Roth-Gaudette said in a statement. “If this isn’t clear evidence of an agency sabotaging its own process to reach a predetermined outcome, then I don’t know what is. What is clear is this: the FCC’s net neutrality repeal is not only undemocratic, it’s illegitimate.”
The FCC voted in December to abolish net neutrality rules, which attempted to compel Internet service providers to treat online content equally. The repeal took effect in June.
