Dem senators urge FCC to prepare for net neutrality ‘Day of Action’

Democratic senators criticized the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) handling of a cyberattack that kept individuals from commenting on a net neutrality proposal, urging the commission to make sure that the system would be more secure in advance of an anticipated influx of comments.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) recalled in a letter that the FCC’s Electronic Communication Filing System (ECFS) was disabled on May 7 and 8 in what the agency said was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The DDoS attack came as John Oliver during a segment of his show, “Last Week Tonight,” urged viewers to comment against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to get rid of net neutrality provisions.

The attack kept an influx of individuals trying to access the ECFS from being able to comment.

{mosads}“This was an unacceptable mistake that left Americans disenfranchised from your comment process,” Wyden and Schatz wrote of the FCC not being able to stop the DDoS attack in May and not offering an alternative means for the public to submit comments.  

The senators’ letter to the agency comes in advance of pro-net neutrality advocacy group Fight for the Future’s net neutrality Day of Action, a push by a coalition of technology companies and organizations calling on the FCC to not roll back Obama-era net neutrality provisions.

The senators wrote that they expect another influx of comments on the Day of Action and urged the FCC to make sure that nothing would interfere with the public’s ability to leave these comments.

“We are concerned that a similar attack may be planned to disrupt the Day of Action,” they wrote. “We encourage you to seek out and employ ECFS measures that allow for flexible scalability and alternative methods of filing.”

During the ECFS crash during net neutrality proceedings under former Chairman Tom Wheeler, the agency took batches of comments via email, then manually put them in the ECFS.

The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.