The Federal Communications Commission said it has upgraded its electronic comment filing system (ECFS), which is how the public and stakeholders weigh in on agency issues and proposed inquiries and regulations.

According to FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the regulator has transitioned to a cloud-based architecture that will allow it to upgrade and expand features and functions and allow it to scale up as needed.

The system now also employs a reCAPTCHA engine to protect against fraud and abuse.

During the comment cycle on the FCC’s 2017 network neutrality proceeding in particular, the agency took heat over the number of bogus or bot-generated comments.

For example, New York State conducted an investigation into comments in the FCC's net neutrality rule proceeding, concluding millions of fraudulent comments were submitted by lead generators employed by broadband companies, thought it found no evidence those companies had direct knowledge that the lead generators were engaging in fraud.

A Pew Research report also found that many of the 21.7 million comments in the net neutrality docket “seemed to include false or misleading personal information.”

“Our comment filing system is a critical avenue for public input that we need to keep up-to-date,” Rosenworcel said. “Today’s effort is a start to do just that and I want to thank the FCC staff and contractors who have made this possible.” ■

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communication Commission is under some bipartisan pressure to prevent false entries and stolen identities from mucking up the public comment process, an effort driven by problems with the network neutrality docket.

That came from two senators with some skin in the game, Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Both of their identities were stolen to file false comments in that FCC docket.

The FCC has been under pressure to ferret out bogus comments, given that as many as 2 million bot-generated or otherwise inauthentic comments were filed in that proceeding, representing by far the most comments, real and fake, for any FCC action.

FCC chair Ajit Pai has said the agency is working to address those issues while still trying to make the process as open as possible. He signaled after the fake comments were identified that erring on the side of inclusion could mean some bad apples wind up in the bunch, as it were.

But the senators had some suggestions for tightening up that process, including using CAPTCHA technology (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to battle the bots. The technology uses those boxes with numbers and letters to retype so a computer can tell whether the user is not another computer.

The senators also want the FCC to publicize just how many fake comments were filed in the docket. There have been some complaints that the distorted letters and numbers are hard to identify, which could discourage use of the system.

A large portion of the public comments filed in the Federal Communications Commission’s network-neutrality docket came from “fake” email domains created by email generator programs, according to the National Legal and Policy Center, which said it has accumulated six CSV files with 1.5 million examples.

The NLPC said its analysis shows that between July 17 and Aug. 4, 5.8 million such “fake” comments were posted in the FCC docket, which had 18.5 million total comments at press time.

The group said the false domains came from a U.S. email generator program at fakemailgenerator.com and include armyspy.com, cuvox.de, dayrep.com, einrot.com, fleckens.hu, gustr.com, jourrapide.com, rhyta.com, superrito.com and teleworm.us.

The net-neutrality docket has been almost as controversial as FCC chair Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back Title II regulations and review the 2015 Open Internet order’s rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

The FCC has said the comments system suffered a distributed-denial-of-service attack connected with John Oliver’s May 7 call on his HBO show, Last Week Tonight, for viewers to flood it with comments in support of Title II. Net-neutrality activists have challenged the FCC’s claim, and Hill Democrats have said it needs investigating.

The FCC is also facing lawsuits for not providing more information on the alleged DDoS attacks, which were cited by its CIO, David Bray, in a May 8 statement following the airing.

“Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks,” Bray said. “These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host.”

Just last week, website Gizmodo posted a story questioning the DDoS claims and citing a former FCC security official saying there had been no DDoS attack in 2014, when Oliver made a similar on-air all for Title II and the FCC similarly cited an attack.

Gizmodo has previously said the FCC, in response to an FOIA request, conceded it did not have analysis to support the May assertion of a DDoS attack, though Pai spokesman Brian Hart has said that report was “categorically false.”

Pai has said the FCC will err on the side of transparency, taking the bogus with the bona fide. In either case, the deadline for comments is Aug. 30. The FCC will continue to accept comments past that date, but does not have to factor them into its decision.

Comments were coming in fast and furious this week on the FCC's review of all its media-related regulations.

The FCC voted May 18 to launch a review of all its rules and regs applying to media outlets, broadcast, cable and satellite. FCC chair Ajit Pai promised to bring out the regulatory weed-whacker, and drew plenty of volunteers to start it up.

The National Association of Broadcasters focused on reforming or eliminating "reporting, recordkeeping and filing requirements."

That includes (1) reducing the frequency of ownership reports, providing more flexibility in meeting children's TV requirements, simplifying attribution rules, and eliminating reporting requirements for "paper copies of numerous broadcaster contracts already identified via other FCC requirements; (2) an annual report on ancillary and supplementary digital TV services by thousands of stations that do not provide these services; and (3) the EEO Mid-Term Report, which requires the submission of information already available in stations’ online public files."

NAB wants broadcasters to have the flexibility of filing more public notices online, including their must carry/retransmission-consent elections instead of having to send them to cable ops by "snail mail."

"As an initial matter, NAB wants to make clear what broadcasters are not through this initiative," the group said. "Local radio and TV stations are not seeking any diminution in their obligations to serve their communities of license. Rather, broadcasters support an updated regulatory regime enhancing local station's ability to serve their listeners and viewers more effectively in today’s competitive media marketplace."

Content creators associated with the major broadcast nets -- Disney/ABC, CBS, Fox, Univision (also members of NAB) -- put in their pitch for clearing out the regulatory "underbrush," including children's TV programming mandates on broadcast and cable when such programming is readily available, and not regulated, on the internet. They want the FCC to reconsider the prohibition of including web links in programs targeted to children, and the prohibition on broadcast host selling -- a character in a cartoon appearing in an ad in that cartoon -- to online platforms.

To make the point of the need for pruning outdated regs, NCTA: The Internet & Television Association, used an old typewriter font for the into to its comments, saying, "Back when many of the regulations addressed in these comments were being considered, this is how our filings at the Commission looked."

The NCTA had plenty of asks, including revising children's advertising limits, eliminating annual cable system reports, reducing the "burdens" of leased access rules, clarifying program-carriage rules, restoring the "proper scope" of program access, and more.

The FCC sought input in a Notice of Inquiry. The NCTA said it should convert that to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and start clearing the underbrush.

The Radio-Television Digital News Association told the FCC that it should eliminate the "telephone broadcast rule," which requires that broadcasters inform any party to a recorded conversation of the intention to air it unless there should be a presumption that the conversation is being broadcast or is likely to be.

"[T]here are so many pervasive means through which a recorded telephone conversation may be disseminated for public consumption that to perpetuate a broadcast-only rule under the guise of protecting privacy is nonsensical," it said.

Free-market group Consumer Action for a Strong Economy (CASE) said that, according to its analysis of the FCC's open internet docket, a majority (65%) favor repealing the Title II-based Open Internet order, as FCC chairman Ajit Pai has proposed to do.

But it also noted that a vast majority (75%) of those comments are from "letter campaigns" coming from both sides of the issue.

In addition, nearly 6% of the comments have been submitted by self-identified international filers.

The group said it looked at the 4,990,000 filings as of June 20, and said it would do similar assessments in the future.

Of those, it said, 3,237,916 support repealing the order, while 35% (1,752,084) oppose repeal.

It said that assessment was based on analysis of "clear language" one way or the other -- including the language encouraged by HBO's John Oliver -- mostly on the form letters that make up the 75% of comments, though it said the percentage might actually be more since it was looking at varieties and permutations of the same language, and there could be more.

CASE identified 19 different form letters. There were at least 288,611 filings from foreign entities, with most against repeal, though it said that number, too, could be higher since those were only folks who had marked the box saying they were international.

One interesting side note: Well over a tenth of the filings (13.2% to be exact) were 140 characters or shorter -- the length of a tweet (suggesting either that commenters were used to conveying their thoughts in that amount of space or that perhaps the comments were doing double duty as FCC input and tweets).

CASE looked at overall sentiment, number of form submissions, comment length and international filers, and said it was "simply providing one way to look at the data."

A group of senate Democrats, including some of the Hill's loudest critics of FCC chair Ajit Pai's effort to roll back Title II, have asked the FBI to investigate the multiple distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks the agency said it suffered and which affected its online comment system.

Related: FCC CIO Says Agency Hit by DDoS Attack

“This particular attack may have denied the American people the opportunity to contribute to what is supposed to be a fair and transparent process, which in turn may call into question the integrity of the FCC’s rulemaking proceedings,” the senators wrote to acting FBI director Andrew McCabe. “We request that you update us on the status of the FBI’s investigation and brief us on this matter.”

The alleged attack appeared to be in connection with the net-neutrality proceeding. Signing the letter were Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), ranking member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee; Al Franken (D-Minn.); Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); Ed Markey (D-Mass.); and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Markey and Wyden have been leaders in the effort to preserve Title II.

Elsewhere, Fight for the Future also has asked for an investigation and documentation of the attack, and some in Congress have also asked the FCC for information about them, but the senators who signed the letter said the FBI needs to get involved given the seriousness of any cyberattack.

They asked the FBI to brief them "on this matter" by June 23.

More than a dozen people who say anti-Title II comments were submitted to the FCC under their names even though they did not submit or authorize them have called on the FCC to remove all fraudulent comments, which they suggest could actually number close to a half million.

The FCC's Restoring Network Freedom docket -- the proposal to roll back Title II classification of ISPs and rethink the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization -- currently has more than 2.6 million comments.

"Our names and personal information were used to file comments we did not make to the Federal Communications Commission," the group wrote in a letter to the FCC posted on the Fight for the Future website, an organization that backs Title II and has been calling for the FCC to explain and fix problems with its comment system.

Related: Fight for the Future Seeks Net-Neutrality Docket Investigation

The letter's signatories -- 14 in all, from across the country -- were identified through Fight for the Future's Comcastroturf.com site, which encourages the public to investigate what Fight for the Future says are fake anti-net neutrality comments filed in the FCC docket.

"We are disturbed by reports that indicate you have no plans to remove these fraudulent comments from the public docket," the letter said. "Whoever is behind this stole our names and addresses, publicly exposed our private information without our permission, and used our identities to file a political statement we did not sign onto. Hundreds of thousands of other Americans may have been victimized too."

The letter writers want the FCC to remove all the fraudulent comments immediately; disclose any information it has on who was behind what they allege are 450,000 fake comments; and call for an investigation into any laws that may have been broken.

"Nearly half a million Americans may have been impacted by whoever impersonated us in a dishonest and deceitful campaign to manufacture false support for your plan to repeal net-neutrality protections," the letter said.

An FCC spokesperson was vetting the letter at press time.

The Comcastroturf.com website was in the news earlier this week after Comcast first filed a cease-and-desist letter about using its name, then said it would take no further action, suggesting the MSO had thought a cybersquatter was behind the site.