REMARKS OF
COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
“BRINGING THE PUBLIC BACK IN: CAN THE COMMENT PROCESS BE FIXED?”
NEW AMERICA
WASHINGTON, DC
MAY 9, 2018
Good afternoon.  Thank you to New America for holding this discussion about bringing 
the public back in—because we all deserve a voice in the decisions made in Washington.  This 
conversation is necessary.  It’s also timely.  In fact, it’s Open Government Week.  Open 
Government Week presents us with the opportunity to ask questions about how citizens can play 
a role in government decision making.  
So in that spirit, let me begin with a question of my own.  Here it goes:  What do Senator 
Jeff Merkley of Oregon, deceased actress Patty Duke, a 13-year old from northern New York 
and a 96-year-old veteran from southern California have in common?  
The answer is not obvious.  But it’s important.  You see, each of these individuals 
appears to have filed comments in the net neutrality record at the Federal Communications 
Commission.  You remember the net neutrality proceeding late last year at the FCC.  It got a lot 
of attention, and rightly so.  Before my colleagues made what I think is the misguided decision to 
roll back net neutrality, the agency sought comment on this issue from stakeholders nationwide.  
And so it appears that a Senator, a dearly departed actress, a teenager from New York and a 
nonagenarian from California went online, submitted their names and addresses, and typed out 
their innermost thoughts about internet regulatory policy.  But appearances can be deceiving.  In 
fact, each of these individuals—along with two million others—had their identities stolen and 
used to file fake comments in the FCC record.  
These fake comments were by no means the only unnerving thing in the FCC net 
neutrality docket.  The agency received about half a million comments that came in from Russian 
e-mail addresses.  It received nearly eight million comments from e-mail domains associated 
with FakeMailGenerator.com that had all but identical wording.  A million more comments were 
submitted using mail-merge techniques designed to falsely make them appear like unique 
submissions.  
Something here is not right—and what is wrong is not confined to the FCC.  Because 
fake comments and stolen identities are pouring into proceedings across Washington.  They’ve 
been uncovered at the Department of Labor, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the 
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.  James 
Grimaldi—who is here with us today—is the journalist who documented so much of this fraud in 
the administrative state in the pages of The Wall Street Journal.   
The Administrative Procedure Act is a law from 1946.  It sets up the basic framework for 
rulemaking—at the FCC and agencies like it across Washington.  Under this law, when a 
government agency proposes new policies, it has a duty to give the public an opportunity to 
2voice their opinion.  After considering these public comments, agencies can proceed with their 
proposed policies and adopt final rules along with a general statement of basis and purpose.
This structure has served us well for decades.  It’s been the solid foundation for every 
agency that seeks public input for its decisions.  Over time, when we have identified deficiencies 
in this framework, we have made adjustments.  As a result, in 1980 the Regulatory Flexibility 
Act amended the Administrative Procedure Act to ensure agencies consider the impact of 
proposed rules on small business.  Plus, other laws—like the Paperwork Reduction Act and 
Unfunded Mandates Reform Act—have changed this framework to respond to new concerns.
But what we are facing now does not reflect what has come before.  Because it is 
apparent the civic infrastructure we have for accepting public comment in the rulemaking 
process is not built for the digital age.  As the Administrative Conference of the United States 
acknowledges, while the basic framework for rulemaking from 1946 has stayed the same, “the 
technological landscape has evolved dramatically.”
Let’s call that an understatement.  Though this problem may seem small in the scheme of 
things, the impact is big.  Administrative decisions made in Washington affect so much of our 
day-to-day life.  They involve everything from internet openness to retirement planning to the 
availability of loans and the energy sources that power our homes and businesses.  So much of 
the decision making that affects our future takes place in the administrative state.
The American public deserves a fair shot at participating in these decisions.  Expert 
agencies are duty bound to hear from everyone, not just those who can afford to pay for expert 
lawyers and lobbyists.  The framework from the Administrative Procedure Act is designed to 
serve the public—by seeking their input—but increasingly they are getting shut out.  Our agency 
internet systems are ill-equipped to handle the mass automation and fraud that already is 
corrupting channels for public comment.  It’s only going to get worse.  The mechanization and 
weaponization of the comment-filing process has only just begun.  
We need to something about it.  Because ensuring the public has a say in what happens in 
Washington matters.  Because trust in public institutions matters.  A few months ago Edelman 
released its annual Trust Barometer and reported than only a third of Americans trust the 
government—a 14 percentage point decline from last year.
Fixing that decline is worth the effort.  We can start with finding ways that give all 
Americans—no matter who they are or where they live—a fighting chance at making 
Washington listen to what they think.
We can’t give in to the easy cynicism that results when our public channels are flooded 
with comments from dead people, stolen identities, batches of bogus filings, and commentary 
that originated from Russian e-mail addresses.  We can’t let this deluge of fake filings further 
delegitimize Washington decisions and erode public trust.  
No one said digital age democracy was going to be easy.  But we’ve got to brace 
ourselves and strengthen our civic infrastructure to withstand what is underway.  This is true at 
3regulatory agencies—and across our political landscape.  Because if you look for them you will 
find uneasy parallels between the flood of fake comments in regulatory proceedings and the 
barrage of posts on social media that was part of a conspicuous campaign to influence our last 
election.  There is a concerted effort to exploit our openness.  It deserves a concerted response.
This has yet to happen.  At the FCC, for instance, the two million individuals who had 
their names stolen and misused in the net neutrality docket have been advised to file another 
statement to that effect in the public record.  Let me put this as gently as I can—this is not a 
scalable solution.
Meanwhile, the agency has refused to work with state authorities that have found that 
their residents have had their identities stolen.  This is not right.  For starters, it is at odds with 
the spirit of cooperative federalism.  But more critically, the theft of identities like this is often a 
violation of state law.  For the record, it’s also a violation of federal law.  Section 1001 of Title 
18 makes it a felony for any person to “knowingly or willfully” make “any materially false, 
fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” in matters before the federal government. 
That makes the unwillingness of our regulators in Washington to address the fraud we already 
know exists especially chilling.
We should be asking how did this happen?  Who orchestrated it?  Who paid for it?  We 
should be investigating—and the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation 
should be involved.  We are looking at a systemic effort to corrupt the process by which the 
public participates in some of the biggest decisions being made in Washington.  If we want to 
build the civic infrastructure to withstand this assault we need to both understand its origins and 
take out the rogues who are stealing identities, cheating the public, and destroying our trust.
While we build this civic infrastructure, we can take steps to improve the rulemaking 
process.  Every agency should perform its own internal investigation.  Every agency should heed 
the advice of the Government Accountability Office—which is right now reviewing the “extent 
and pervasiveness of fraud and the misuse of American identities during the federal rulemaking 
process.”  Every agency should consider simple security measures—like CAPTCHA or two-
factor authentication—that can enhance security without decreasing public participation.  And 
every agency can do something old-fashioned:  they can hold public hearings.
But the truth is we need to get started.  Because that’s what is necessary to bring the 
public back in—and that’s what democracy in the digital age requires.
Thank you.