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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

Ajit Pai being an ass is not news.

The more interesting item is the FCC's implicit assertion that submitting comments under fake names is not against the law.[0] That's the part that should have people overturning tables.

The FCC also said that Schneiderman has not "identified any specific law or legal authority" to support its assertion that submitting comments under fake names violates state law.

[0]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/fcc-chair-still-...

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This might be a more thorough source for that instead of arstechnica

http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/11/29/public-comments-to-the...

About 6% where unique. Most were against net neutrality, but the single most repeated one was a pro-neutrality comment submitted 2.8M times.

> That's the part that should have people overturning tables.

Overturning tables because it is not against the law, so they should make it illegal, or because it is against the law and he was lying?

So what is the "specific law or legal authority" that makes it illegal?

So if it's not against the letter of the law, that makes it ok?

I imagine so, as that point it would be a matter of taste.

When did I claim that?

Yes. Thats the basis of legal system.

I would say that submitting a public comment under a pseudonym is OK even if it was against the law.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that's not actually the issue in question. The comments to the FCC board were made using (publicly available) real name and address pairs.

Someone submitted a comment using my legal name and current address. Whether that person should have been able to comment pseudonymously or not is beside the point. What they actually did is make a public statement in my name, which may or may not reflect my actual views, and which definitely impedes my ability to express those actual views if and when I desire to.

18 U.S.C. § 1001

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001

Unless you were asking for the state law which would be http://codes.findlaw.com/ny/penal-law/pen-sect-190-25.html

Has this law ever been applied to public comments on a matter before a government agency?

Off the top of my head I don't know. Is the existence of a prior prosecution based on identical or substantially similar facts a condition precedent for a statute to be violated?

The reason I'm asking is that, IANAL, but I doubt that law was intended to cover something like this. So I'm simply wondering if it had been applied in a similar way in the past, because that would be the best indicator of whether or not it was applicable.

It is an enormously broad statute. Many would say too much so. This article[1] advocates that it is too broad, but provides some useful examples of how it has been interpreted and applied. Whether or not it was intended to cover something like this is not really relevant as to whether or not the statute was violated. I think what you might be getting at is the question of whether or not the statute is unconstitutionally vague, which is a pretty good argument, but has been mostly rejected by the courts.

[1] https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http...

What do identity fraud statutes cover (NY, national, or otherwise)?

Pretending to be another (real) person is different from using a fake name.

A lot of "Pretending to be another (real) person" is being alleged.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171030/11255938512/dead-...

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