S04.E11: Net Neutrality

[Athena]

LWT returns May 7th for its 100th episode. Please check the Youtube channel for extras.

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Other segments: Eight Mile Style v New Zealand National Party, American Health Care Act of 2017

 

[jbrecken]

Looks like he crashed the fcc site again.

[Sparger Springs]

I tried its not working. I will try again tomorrow.

[Lantern7]

Here's where I went from the URL. How will I know when I can do stuff on it?

No mention of the 100th episode aside from the "C" bit in the credits.

[biakbiak]

So where can I get a gigantic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup mug?

Eta: while I typed this my boyfriend found one on the INTERNET and bought it for me! 

[paigow]

8 hours ago, biakbiak said:

So where can I get a gigantic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup mug?

Eta: while I typed this my boyfriend found one on the INTERNET and bought it for me! 

Is shipping more than the actual price?

[biakbiak]

1 hour ago, paigow said:

Is shipping more than the actual price?

The same but for $14.00 dollars next Monday I will have the drink of douchey FCC asshats.

[ALenore]

The gofccyourself is working.  I submitted a comment.  I don't know if it will do any good now that Trump's is in charge though.  

[peeayebee]

Great show, as usual. 

I've noticed John's long thumbs before.

I hadn't heard of that Reese's mug guy before. Or, I probably had but he just didn't stick out in the news for me like more controversial appointees/nominees of this Admin. What a douche. 

I'll have to go to gofccyourself in a bit. Love how LWT made it easier for us to get to the comments page.

[ganesh]

6 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

I hadn't heard of that Reese's mug guy before.

I watched the PBS interview from which they showed the clip. He's exactly as was portrayed on the show here, and typical of this administration's appointees. Even though he's under the radar, he can probably do the most damage.

I liked all the random internet postings that Jon listed as to why you should have time to leave a comment on the FCC site. Is "choke me daddy" a thing?

[biakbiak]

2 hours ago, ALenore said:

The gofccyourself is working.  I submitted a comment.  I don't know if it will do any good now that Trump's is in charge though.  

It wouldn't allow me to submit a comment. There are other ways to contact them Phone: 1-888-225-5322 Fax: 1-866-418-0232

[iMonrey]

I kind of wish the main story had been about the healthcare bill. Big picture, I think that's a more important issue than net neutrality. And it seems like John's original story on net neutrality is what "put him on the map," so to speak, so this one felt a little like a vanity piece. 

[OneWhoLurks]

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Ajit Pai can’t catch a break this Monday. Just after John Oliver shaded the FCC commissioner for his lame Big Lebowski tweets and net neutrality stance, the Writers Guild of America has issued a statement slamming Pai, too. Last week, the FCC announced plans to review Colbert’s Late Show monologue joke about President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the phrase “cock holster.” On Monday morning the WGA came to Colbert’s defense:

“As presidents of the Writers Guilds of America, East and West, we were appalled to read recent remarks by Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai,” WGA East boss Michael Winship and WGA West chief Howard Rodman told Deadline. “He said the FCC would investigate a joke about Donald Trump by Writers Guild member Stephen Colbert, ‘apply the law’ and ‘take appropriate action’ if the joke were found to be ‘obscene.’”

“Pai’s remarks are just the latest in a series of statements by the current administration indicating a willful disregard of the First Amendment. Colbert was poking fun at authority, a time-honored American tradition and an essential principle of democracy.”

 

WGA ‘Appalled’ at FCC Investigation of Stephen Colbert Over Trump Monologue

[peeayebee]

I read that the FCC is required to investigate complaints. It's not like they just decided to do it.

 

3 hours ago, ganesh said:

Is "choke me daddy" a thing?

I was wondering about this too. I still am. I'm afraid to Google. Or even Bing.

[ganesh]

There's no such thing as a "Bing." Google it!

[Traveller519]

Hmmm, all this FCC discussion, and nary a mention of dingos. Where there not more dingo analogies we could make on Title I vs. Title II?  It's like you don't even really care, John!

[OneWhoLurks]

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Oliver’s show even registered a new URL, gofccyourself.com, which redirects to the FCC’s comment page for the net neutrality proceeding—and seems to have briefly crashed the FCC site with traffic. It’s back now, in case you did want to file a comment.

Perhaps that’s why the anti-net neutrality forces in DC are already trying to counteract Oliver’s video: They’re maybe just a little bit frightened of him. The think tank Tech Freedom, which has taken $157,500 from the ISPs’ lobbying group NCTA, according to tax documents accessed through the Center for Public Integrity’s Nonprofit Network tool, live-tweeted the segment:

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We'll be livetweeting @LastWeekTonight's segment on the Title II/Net Neutrality debate. Prepare for some #truthbombs from us. #FreetheNet

 

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Anyway, congrats to John Oliver, who forced some unfortunate lackey for the interests of some of the world’s biggest corporations to stay up late on a Sunday night tweeting about an HBO segment, and not even getting many retweets for it. That rules.

John Oliver Pisses Off ISP Vultures With New Net Neutrality Segment
 

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“Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos)," FCC chief information officer David Bray said in a statement Monday.

"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," Bray continued.

"These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC. While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these DDoS events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments."

 

FCC says it was victim of cyberattack after John Oliver show

Edited May 8, 2017 by OneWhoLurks

[Irlandesa]

3 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I kind of wish the main story had been about the healthcare bill. Big picture, I think that's a more important issue than net neutrality. And it seems like John's original story on net neutrality is what "put him on the map," so to speak, so this one felt a little like a vanity piece. 

But isn't a vanity piece appropriate for a 100th episode?  

Besides,  they may need more time to best tackle the bill.

[OneWhoLurks]

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But the agency's statement has raised skepticism from consumer advocacy group Fight for the Future. The group said in a statement that it finds the timing of the attack too coincidental. The group raised questions about whether the FCC was diagnosing the slowdown correctly, or whether an outside attack could have been launched specifically to keep Oliver's viewers from commenting.

“The FCC should immediately release its logs to an independent security analyst or major news outlet to verify exactly what happened last night,” said the group's campaign director, Evan Greer.

 

The FCC says an attack — not John Oliver — hampered its website 

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Prime Minister Bill English has responded to John Oliver's mocking of the National Party's legal battle with Eminem, saying he "isn't very funny".

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The National Party leader-turned-comedy critic cannot recall what specific work of Oliver's he has seen and disliked, but confirms he has no intention of watching the latest clip.

"I just hope he's funny. It's a serious business in the court - that's where it's got to be dealt with. If we attract attention, it doesn't bother me too much."

 

John Oliver 'not very funny' - Bill English

Edited May 9, 2017 by OneWhoLurks

[Lantern7]

Crap . . . I got the survey now, but I forgot what I was supposed to do.

[Delwyn]

FCC and Ajit Pai come for Stephen Colbert; John Oliver says "Hold my beer." 

ETA: I found this hilarious fact sheet on the FCC site that kind of seems like it's trolling Pai just a little bit:

https://www.fcc.gov/document/open-internet-process-then-and-now

Edited May 9, 2017 by Delwyn

[paigow]

The Eminem segment was too long and lacked a compelling punchline / payoff.

[sacrebleu]

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I kind of wish the main story had been about the healthcare bill.

I didn't mind it, actually. The House vote was a travesty. No hearings, no markup, no CBO score so no one knows what their version actually costs. The Senate announced (before LWT aired) they were scrapping the bill and writing their own.  So-- he could spend 20 minutes ripping apart a bill that ceases to be relevant-- or he could focus on another issue. 

[ganesh]

He could revisit it when the senate starts working on a bill, but they said it wouldn't be for a while anyway. 

[dcalley]

14 hours ago, Delwyn said:

ETA: I found this hilarious fact sheet on the FCC site that kind of seems like it's trolling Pai just a little bit:

https://www.fcc.gov/document/open-internet-process-then-and-now

That seems to be the work of Mignon Clyburn, the only Democrat FCC commissioner. Her term ends this year.

[dcalley]

Senators ask Pai for details on Sunday night "attack"

[OneWhoLurks]

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When the rules were being debated three years ago, Oliver's encouragement to file comments to the FCC during a June 2014 episode crashed the agency's site. On his latest episode, which debuted Sunday night, Oliver urged viewers with a Shakespearean, "once more into the breach."

They apparently responded, with net neutrality comments rising from about 30,000 Monday morning to more than 184,650 by midday Tuesday.

 

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The FCC said Tuesday that a similar DDoS attack in 2014 caused what was publicly thought to be a crash. At the time, the FCC did not want to say there was such an attack out of concern for copycats, said Mark Wigfield, the FCC’s deputy director of media relations.

Oliver’s video back then spurred an increase in comments from 5,000 daily to 25,000, he said. Eventually, the FCC received a record of nearly 4 million comments.

This latest influx has come quicker, adding about 150,000 in a little more than a day . In addition to increasing system capacity, the FCC also created a Box.com account for bulk comment filings, Wigfield said.

 

John Oliver may have helped spur 150,000 comments to FCC on Net neutrality
 

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DDoS attacks occur when sites are bombarded with fake requests, causing the system to overload. As a result, real users trying to access the website cannot go through.

"Neither 'Last Week Tonight' nor HBO were involved in any DDoS attack against the FCC website on Sunday night," HBO said in a statement.

 

John Oliver's plea for net neutrality may have provoked hackers to knock out FCC website
 

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However, an analysis of comments to Pai's Restoring Internet Freedom filing, which Oliver has dubbed "Go FCC yourself," shows thousands of comments using fake names and bots posing as "Jesus Christ," "Michael Jackson," "Homer Simpson," and "Melania Trump."

For instance, as of Tuesday evening, there were 1,761 comments filed under the name "John Oliver," 998 separate comments using the name "Yoni Schwartz," and 611 comments filed using "1" as the name.

Over 500 were submitted using Chairman Pai's name, as well as 189 from "Donald Trump" and 8 from "Obama."

 

John Oliver’s Net Neutrality Campaign Filled With Bots, Fake Comments, Racist Attacks Against FCC Chairman

Edited May 10, 2017 by OneWhoLurks

[wknt3]

On 5/8/2017 at 1:12 PM, iMonrey said:

I kind of wish the main story had been about the healthcare bill. Big picture, I think that's a more important issue than net neutrality. And it seems like John's original story on net neutrality is what "put him on the map," so to speak, so this one felt a little like a vanity piece. 

Have to disagree. The healthcare bill has been well covered elsewhere in late night and this show has never been about the "most important" story. It's always made a conscious effort to talk about under the radar, but important stories especially when it can mobilize the audience to take action that may have an effect and I think this definitely qualifies. There certainly is a personal connection with the previous story and John working in the industry and seeing what the big media companies do without bright lines and strict anti-monopoly regulations, but I don't think that's a good reason not to do the story. And in the long term this issue has the potential to have an effect on the coverage and therefore the outcome of all the "more important" stories of the week.

[megsara]

I appreciate the show bringing attention to these kinds of stories, because they are super important, but these days there is so much insanity to wade through that they are easy to miss.  God, he really did stack these agencies from an apparently limitless source of idiots.  

The New Zealand/Eminem story sent me into the longest fit of giggles.  The clip of the song playing and everyone having to just solemnly listen was insanely funny to me.  Plus the woman in the background and 'how did I end up here?' was the cherry on top.   It was very silly and I loved it and needed it very much.  

Edited May 10, 2017 by megsara

[OneWhoLurks]

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Not everyone bought the explanation.

“It’s an odd coincidence,” said one former FCC Democratic staff member. “I’m skeptical that this is a DDoS attack. The [Electronic Comment Filing System] was always inadequate. We were promised an adequate system after the millions of comments filed last time brought the system down, and I am dubious that that fix ever happened.”

The former staffer said that Bray should at least reveal evidence of the attack. On Tuesday Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) sent a letter to the FCC also asking for proof.

 

John Oliver, FCC feud heats up
 

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So much so that more than 128,000 identical comments have been posted since the feedback doors were opened, now representing a significant slice of the comments on the FCC's feedback docket.

"The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation," the comment says. "I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the internet known as Title II and restore the bipartisan light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the internet to flourish for more than 20 years."

The comments follow the same pattern: the bot appears to cycle through names in an alphabetical order, leaving the person's name, and postal address and zip code.

 

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But a key question remains: who's behind the bot?

Several people on those Reddit threads pointed out that part of the bot's comment comes from a 2010 press release by the Center for Individual Freedom, which vehemently opposes net neutrality in any form. But unlike some astroturfing that allow commenters to submit the same blanket text from a third-party site, there doesn't appear to be a single source for this repeatedly-posted comment in this case.

It's also not the first time the FCC's own commenting system has been hijacked to push anti-net neutrality views.

 

A bot is flooding the FCC's website with fake anti-net neutrality comments
 

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It’s unclear who may have orchestrated the comments. A line of the language used in the comment, specifically about the “unprecedented regulatory power [of] the Obama Administration,” has some resemblance to a 2010 press release from the Center for Individual Freedom, a conservative, anti-net neutrality group.

We contacted the group to ask whether it had organized a campaign to send this message. “Yes, the Center for Individual Freedom is asking our supporters and other activists across the nation to submit comments,” a spokesperson said. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the wording [of the email] is similar to the wording CFIF used in 2010 as our messaging on this general issue has been consistent for nearly a decade.”

The spokesperson said that CFIF had sent emails to supporters and posted a form with the text on “digital media platforms across the internet,” allowing people to sign their names and addresses. They also provided a screenshot of the form, posted here. This doesn’t mean the CFIF is behind this spamming campaign. But it’s plausible that whoever sent the bogus comments used this form (or at least the message from it) to do so. “Your question about the possibility of someone corrupting the effort is something we need to look into,” said the spokesperson.

 

Anti-net neutrality spammers are impersonating real people to flood FCC comments

Edited May 10, 2017 by OneWhoLurks

[OneWhoLurks]

Net Neutrality Update: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Web Exclusive)

ETA:
 

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Sinchok found that comments filed through the site itself were “pretty similar” to each other, mostly using phrasing similar to what John Oliver suggested, but also had “a ton of variation.” Sinchok concluded that if there was any significant bot activity for messages filed through the site, “they’re doing a good job of disguising it.” The most common on-site comment text was filed around 14,000 times; the rest of the top 5 most common comments were filed several thousand times each, and all were pro-net neutrality.

Compare that to comments filed by API, where the most common comment text has been filed 436,000 times. The next most common comment text has been filed 181,000 times, and appears to come from Free our Internet, a non-profit staffed by a Trump campaign staffer from Maine and the spokesperson for Breitbart News Network. Its website says Obama “gave away our internet” with the net neutrality order,“at the behest of radical leftists and globalists like George Soros.” Another, from the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which gets funding from Koch brothers-funded groups, has been filed 96,000 times. The only pro-net neutrality comment filed en masse by API has been filed 24,000 times.

Sinchok also identified a second stat—filing a comment through the FCC site gives the commenter the option to request a confirmation of their comment, but the overwhelming majority of the CFIF “unprecedented...” comments recorded no data for email confirmation. That seems to suggest those comments came from a bot using other people’s email addresses—why would they want to alert those people their addresses were used with an email confirmation? Meanwhile, pro-net neutrality comments filed through Battle for the Net mostly did opt to receive email confirmation.

 

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Fossett also has some conclusions about how many genuine comments have been filed to support Pai. After removing the supposed bot comments, he took a random sample of 200 real comments and categorized all of them by whether they supported or opposed net neutrality. He found, unsurprisingly, an overwhelming majority of 95.6 percent in favor of keeping net neutrality rules.

It Sure Looks Like the FCC’s Anti-Net Neutrality Bot Problem Got Worse

Edited May 17, 2017 by OneWhoLurks

[OneWhoLurks]

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The Federal Communications Commission released the text of its proposal to repeal the agency’s net neutrality rules Tuesday, opening it up to comments from the public.

The commission voted along party lines Thursday to move forward with the proceeding to eliminate the regulations, which reclassified internet service providers as telecommunications companies and required them to treat all web traffic equally.

 

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Those interested in commenting on the proceeding have until August 17.

FCC opens public comment period for net neutrality

ETA:
 

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At the Skid Row meeting, sponsored by a collection of advocacy groups called the Voices for Internet Freedom Coalition, the intricacies of FCC policy give way to broader arguments of why the internet has become a necessity.

Speakers presented a variety of concerns, from struggles to find Wi-Fi to worries about the privacy of information to the hassles of merely finding a place to charge their phones. Others talked of blogging as a way to have a voice. “If we are not recognized on the internet, then we have no identity,” one woman said.

After listening to their remarks, Clyburn summed things up succinctly: “People should not have to choose between paying their water bills, paying their rent, eating and being connected.” In other words, the internet is like a utility — which is at the crux of the current debate.

 

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But the FCC first will go through a public comment period in which anyone can weigh in. Back in 2014 and 2015, about 4 million people did so, setting a record. This month, more than 2 million have done likewise, thanks in part to a recent segment on John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” over which Clyburn admitted to laughing so hard “I heard probably only three-quarters of what he said.” The segment triggered a flood of comments to the FCC on the issue.

Clyburn calls broadband “the greatest equalizer of our time.” To her, the debate over net neutrality is linked to equal access to internet service. During her tenure on the FCC, she has been pushing for expansion of a program to provide lower-cost broadband service to low-income communities.

“We could think of nowhere else than Skid Row to really call attention to where the challenges are,” she says in an interview. “It is very expensive and taxing to be low income and to be economically disadvantaged. Very often times they don’t have the wherewithal to find out about decisions” made by the federal government.

 

FCC’s Mignon Clyburn Takes Net Neutrality to Skid Row

Edited May 25, 2017 by OneWhoLurks

[OneWhoLurks]

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Half a million fake, identical anti-Net Neutrality comments were posted on the FCC's docket on killing Net Neutrality, using identities that appear to have been stolen from a voter registration breach.

The FCC says it will not discard these comments and Comcast is so desperate to stop people from finding out whether their identities were forged in one of the comments that it committed copyfraud to shut down a site that helped them do just that.

Fight for the Future continues to do excellent work on this, investigating the real identities (and views on Net Neutrality) of the people named in the comments. Their latest findings include the discovery that many of the alleged commenters are dead, and others firmly support Net Neutrality.

 

The anti-Net Neutrality bots that flooded the FCC impersonated dead people

[ganesh]

Do these people even know what they're opposing? It seems they would want neutrality in order to freely spew their nonsense online. 

[OneWhoLurks]

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Five Democratic senators are seeking an FBI investigation into possible cyberattacks on the Federal Communication Commission's online comment system.

The FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System crashed in the early hours of May 8 in what the agency called "deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard” the commission and render its systems unusable by legitimate commenters.

Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) want acting FBI director Andrew McCabe to make an investigation of that May disruption a priority, and also called for an investigation into the source of the attack. The senators' letter emphasized that they were especially troubled by the disruption of the process of public commentary given that public participation is crucial to the integrity of the FCC’s regulatory process.

 

Lawmakers seek answers on alleged FCC DDoS attack

[OneWhoLurks]

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With the Federal Communications Commission moving toward repealing Obama-era net neutrality rules, a new poll shows strong, bipartisan backing to keep them in place.

Sixty-percent of respondents in a Morning Consult/POLITICO poll said they support rules that say internet service providers like Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. “cannot block, throttle or prioritize certain content on the internet.”

The difference between supporters by party was 2 percentage points, with 59 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats backing the rules. The same percentage of tea party supporters and Democrats expressed strong support for net neutrality, at 37 percent.

 

Poll Shows Broad, Bipartisan Support for Net Neutrality Rules

[OneWhoLurks]

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Agency chief Ajit Pai said the FBI declined to investigate the FCC cyberattack that followed a “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” segment in May, when Oliver called on viewers to submit comments opposing Pai’s plan to scale back net neutrality rules.

“In speaking with the FBI, the conclusion was reached that, given the facts currently known, the attack did not appear to rise to the level of a major incident that would trigger further FBI involvement,” Pai wrote to a pair of Senate Democrats, who were skeptical of the attack. “The FCC and FBI agreed to have further discussions if additional events or the discovery of additional evidence warrant consultation.”

The June letter came in response to a May letter from Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Brian Schatz of Hawaii. Both were skeptical of the timing of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which hijacked a network of compromised internet connected devices and flooded the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). Multiple DDoS incidents crashed the ECFS Sunday into Monday, presumably at the height of comment submissions influenced by the “Last Week Tonight” episode.

 

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Democrats asked for more information on the “alleged cyberattacks,” how the FBI determined the situation didn’t warrant their attention, and what steps the FCC is taking to prevent future attacks, while providing commenters with additional means of ensuring their voices are heard.

Fight for the Future was equally unswayed, saying Pai’s explanation “raises more questions than answers.”

“The agency also claims the attacks came from ‘cloud providers,'” the group said in a statement. “If this is the case, cloud providers keep records of the exact resources used by each account for billing purposes. Why hasn’t the FCC employed legal means to identify who allegedly attacked their systems?”

 

FBI Declines to Investigate FCC Cyberattack

[OneWhoLurks]

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The Federal Communications Commission intends to keep secret more than 200 pages of documents related to an alleged cyberattack that the agency says impaired its systems two months ago. The agency claims that it was bombarded in early May with traffic originating from a cloud service, which caused its website to crash temporarily while reportedly receiving more than 160 comments per minute on the topic of net neutrality.

The agency’s chief information officer, David Bray, stated in a letter on May 8 that an “analysis” had revealed that the FCC was “subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks,” bringing down the comment site and making it inaccessible to the public. Those attacks, Bray said, were “deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host.”

The FCC now tells Gizmodo, however, that it holds no records of such an analysis ever being performed on its public comment system; the agency claims that while its IT staff observed a cyberattack taking place, those observations “did not result in written documentation.”

 

FCC Now Says There Is No Documented 'Analysis' of the Cyberattack It Claims Crippled Its Website in May

[OneWhoLurks]

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A spokesman for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed it has accepted a request from two Democratic lawmakers to probe the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that the FCC said disrupted its electronic comment filing system in May.

The spokesman said that the probe, which was first reported by Politico, is “now in the queue, but the work won’t get underway for several months.” The investigation will also examine the FCC’s broader cybersecurity efforts.

 

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The agency’s comment filing system was brought down the day after comedian John Oliver slammed the FCC for trying to ease Obama-era net neutrality regulations during a segment on his HBO show. The incident generated speculation that the system had been overwhelmed with traffic because Oliver directed his viewers to file comments supporting the regulations. 

However, the FCC later said that the system had been targeted with a DDoS attack, which overwhelms a website with massive amounts of fake traffic. 

 

GAO to probe FCC cyberattack that struck amid net neutrality debate

[OneWhoLurks]

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"These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC," read the statement from the commission's chief information officer at the time, David Bray.

The investigation and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai blame the inaccurate information on Bray -- whom Pai, a Republican appointee to the commission, insinuated may have had political motives.

"I am deeply disappointed that the FCC's former Chief Information Officer (CIO), who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people," Pai said in a statement on the report Monday.

 

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The FCC issued the news release and letters to several members of Congress describing the incident as an attack. But inside the agency, staffers handled the episode differently.

"We discovered the FCC had not defined the event internally as a cyber security incident" and that officials had not followed their own cyberattack procedures, including contacting the Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, the investigation found.

Instead, analyses found "spikes in web traffic coinciding exactly with the timing of: (1) the release of information during the ... episode; (2) the release of the episode on The Last Week Tonight with John Oliver YouTube channel; and (3) tweets about that release."

 

That was no cyberattack on the FCC, inspector general says -- just John Oliver fans