Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and 17 Attorneys General today wrote to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expressing their concern about falsified comments made to the FCC, and asking the Commission to delay its rulemaking deadline.

“Changing the rules around net neutrality will have major implications for commerce and almost every aspect of modern life. Before that is allowed to happen, we must get to the bottom of whether fraud was committed in the FCC comment process on behalf of unsuspecting Americans,” said Oregon Attorney General Rosenblum.

The multi-state letter, which can be found here, was led by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and signed by the Attorneys General of California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington.

“A careful review of the publicly available information revealed a pattern of fake submissions using the names of real people. In fact, there may be over one million fake submissions from across the country. This is akin to identity theft on a massive scale – and theft of someone’s voice in a democracy is particularly concerning,” wrote the Attorneys General.

The Attorneys General end the letter by writing, “It is essential that the Commission gets a full and accurate picture of how changes to net neutrality will affect the everyday lives of Americans before they can act on such sweeping policy changes.”

Contact:

Kristina Edmunson, Department of Justice, Kristina.Edmunson@doj.oregon.gov, 503-378-6002