{"id":30985,"date":"2018-01-13T09:11:43","date_gmt":"2018-01-13T17:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=30985"},"modified":"2018-01-13T09:11:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T17:11:43","slug":"everyday-erinyes-108","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/13\/everyday-erinyes-108\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #108"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.\u00a0 These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.\u00a0 Even though there are many more which I can’t include.\u00a0 As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

I wrote last week about impersonation trolls and how “well” they are doing – for Nazis.\u00a0 But it turns out that impersonation trolls are not JUST for Nazis.\u00a0 Corporations are doing them too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I know, I know, the line between corporations and Nazis is a pretty thin one, especially what with Citizens United and all.\u00a0 But it seems to me that the goal of Nazis is to steal freedom, and lives, and livelihood from certain individuals, and when this involves stealing money, that’s just a fringe benefit.\u00a0 Whereas with corporations, it’s just the opposite – the goal is to steal money (they are not so particular as to from whom), and any loss of life, or livelihood, or freedom is just a fringe benefit.\"\"<\/p>\n

So we have a regime which wants generally to limit or eliminate regulations – you know, regulations, the things that keep us safe and keep our playing ground kinda sorta halfway level.\u00a0 And, we have a bunch of wealthy corporations that just want to get wealthier, and those darned regulations are expensive to comply with.\u00a0 Stir into the mix a sprinkling of people who know how to hack, and what do you get?\u00a0 You get –<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of comments, purportedly made by Americans, have come in over \"\"the electronic transom to at least five different federal agencies calling for an end to Obama-era consumer protections and other regulations that impede profits, a series of investigative reports by the Wall Street Journal found. Except, the people who supposedly sent these comments never did.\"\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Further,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Journal previously found fraudulent postings under names and email addresses at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission,\u201d it continued. \u201cThe Journal\u2019s findings were cited by calls from Congress to delay the repeal of the FCC\u2019s net-neutrality rule.\u201d\"\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, we know what happened to that.<\/p>\n

Posting a fraudulent comment on a Federal website is a felony, and the departments who have been defrauded will remove such comments when notified.\u00a0 But most agencies make it a bit difficult to check the authenticity of comments independently.\u00a0 Only a few, for instance, publish the email address with the comment.\u00a0 And I find that reasonable.\u00a0 When I post a comment, or sign a petition or a letter sponsored by an organization, I don’t mind the agency having my email address, nor do I have a \"\"problem with the organization having my email address (that’s probably how I found out about the petition.)\u00a0 But I really don’t want my email posted by my name on the agency website – for exactly this reason.<\/p>\n

I would, however, want my email address provided to any government attorney who is investigating comment fraud – and that’s just what is NOT happening.<\/p>\n

The day before the FCC vote in late November, the Verge reported, \u201cA search of the duplicated text found more than 58,000 results as of press time, with 17,000 of those posted in the last 24 hours alone.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

At that time, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, had been stonewalled by the FCC for six months in his office\u2019s efforts to investigate the falsified public comments. (Verge first reported the fake comments in May 2017.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would certainly have trusted Eric Schneiderman with my email address (which, I suspect, is exactly why Ajit Pai wouldn’t.)\u00a0\u00a0 And we did hear a little bit about this, at the last minute, before the FCC threw us to the wolves – but it all happened pretty fast.\u00a0 And it was just the tip of the iceberg anyway, as you see from the agencies we KNOW were targeted..<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the impersonating software was able to insert subtle differences in the messages so that they would not be dismissed as identical.\u00a0 It was even able to insert some phony comments on the side opposite the side that was being pushed!\u00a0 Not so many as to distract from its main point, though.\u00a0 Just enough to make unsuspecting agencies think there was an actual dialogue and real interest – on issues where there wasn’t.\u00a0 Probably surprising no one, those whose identities were used without their permission were just as furious if they agreed with the comment as they were if they didn’t.<\/p>\n

If you have a subscription to the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, you can read the full report – it’s linked from AlterNet.\u00a0 (I don’t.)<\/p>\n

But there’s one thing missing from it:<\/p>\n

\"\"[T]hey didn\u2019t explore the most obvious question: who is behind these moves? While there is likely to be more than one answer and one culprit, only one category of special interest has the means and motives to thwart government regulators: that’s the targeted industries, professional trade association and lobbyists and the biggest corporate players.<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead the Journal\u2019s investigative reports leave readers with small-scale indignation and not the bigger pattern that private sector interests have found a new way to steal and use personal data for their bottom-line battles with government.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, other things happened last week.\u00a0 But many of them we know about, thanks to TC and Sam and Stephen and Rachel and all the others.\u00a0 And I think this is important enough to stand alone and receive the attention of all three Furies (and all their nameless sisters – you never know – there could be thousands – even millions.)<\/p>\n

Alecto<\/strong><\/span> – Megaera<\/span><\/strong> – Tisiphone<\/strong><\/span> – it’s a deceptively simple problem.\u00a0 Corporations have plenty of money to produce huge fakes (which make them more money).\u00a0 Regulators do not have the resources (money, but also adequate staffing, adequate training, adequate time) to tear them down.\u00a0 And, even if they did, the corporations would just have the Republicans steamroll over them.\u00a0 So\u00a0 it all comes down to getting them out.<\/p>\n

We are trying our best to have candidates everywhere – and to get out the vote everywhere – and to deliver our true message well enough to get more people involved everywhere.\u00a0 But – help us.\u00a0 Please.<\/p>\n

The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\n

Cross posted to Care2 HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.\u00a0 These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.\u00a0 Even though there […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":18437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}