[NNagain] new FCC intergovernmental advisory committee

[David Bray, PhD]

Relating to that quote
https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/summary-discussing-applications-generative-ai-rule-development-and-evaluation

[snippet] "...

First, agencies use different approaches when addressing AI-generated
comments, with consequential results. The Federal Communication
Commission’s (FCC) Electronic Comment Filing System
<https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings> and the General Services
Administration’s (GSA) eRulemaking program
<https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/organization/federal-acquisition-service/technology-transformation-services/erulemaking>
(which is used by dozens of federal agencies as a shared service) represent
the two broad strokes of public commenting processes. Participants
discussed how back in the mid-2010s different government agencies
experienced spikes in what appeared to be a mixture of human- and
bot-submitted public comments, although an exceedingly small number of
rulemaking efforts saw more than 10,000 comments. A 2021 analysis of a
spike in public comments impacting the Environmental Protection Agency
observed
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01900692.2021.1931314> that
“the 2002 E-Government Act did not anticipate the emergence of bots and
thus fails to provide agencies with sufficient guidance on how to identify
and treat bots and fake comments.”

Participants observed that the FCC had legally interpreted the
Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946 and related policies in a manner
that effectively gave senior management less discretion to address the risk
of comment surges – and precluded the FCC from being able to adopt the
GSA’s eRulemaking program. During the mid-2010s, the then-CIO had attempted
to make the case for the FCC to adopt the eRulemaking program and not
succeeded. This stemmed from the FCC’s interpretations of the APA that
prioritized real-time viewing of comments rather than waiting to post
submissions until they are processed, acceptance of all comments even if
they were perceived as potential spam, allowance of anonymous comments or
comments with no identification checks, a reluctance to use CAPTCHA, and a
strong push by external parties for the ability to submit comments in
bulk. While
the FCC’s legacy Electronic Comment Filing System eventually moved to
a cloud-based
service
<https://lnwprogram.org/content/out-danger-leading-system-and-culture-change-fcc>
that included API rate limits for comment submissions, it employed a GSA
service that before 2017 did not monitor API key requests for multiple
registrations. After 2017, GSA’s public-facing platform, located at
regulations.gov <https://www.regulations.gov>, successfully implemented
techniques such as CAPTCHA and API rate limits to mitigate
<https://regulatorystudies.columbian.gwu.edu/will-chatgpt-break-notice-and-comment-regulations>
the risk of being overwhelmed by automated submissions. The FCC since 2017
has made some adjustments too.

Participants also discussed how the 2017 net neutrality rulemaking
demonstrated that the FCC’s interpretations of the APA made it technically
at risk of astroturfing
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/14/millions-fake-commenters-asked-fcc-end-net-neutrality-astroturfing-is-business-model/>
–
defined as organized activity
<https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astroturfing> that falsely
attempts to pass itself off as a grassroots movement. The Commission’s
proposal received nearly 23 million comments in 2017, requiring the FCC to
scale its cloud-based systems more than 3,000 percent to address the flood
of comments. In 2021, the New York Attorney General identified at least 18
million
<https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing>
of these comments as not authentic. Since 2017, regulations.gov has not
experienced the same issues, although some
<https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EPA-HQ-OA-2018-0259> rulemakings
<https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EPA-HQ-OAR-2017-0355> routinely receive
large volumes of mass submissions (though none that approach the scale of
23 million comments). Comparing different legal interpretations of the APA
and the downstream impact on technical implementations highlighted how
policy decisions may prevent the commenting process from being overwhelmed
by bots or generative AI submissions.

..."

On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 10:27 AM Frantisek Borsik via Nnagain <
nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> Paul Baran 1994: "The FCC has a few very good technical people, but
> they're totally outnumbered by the lawyers."
> https://www.eff.org/pages/false-scarcity-baran-cngn-94
>
> All the best,
>
> Frank
>
> Frantisek (Frank) Borsik
>
>
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantisekborsik
>
> Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp: +421919416714
>
> iMessage, mobile: +420775230885
>
> Skype: casioa5302ca
>
> frantisek.borsik at gmail.com
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 3:06 PM Dave Taht via Nnagain <
> nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>> not an obvious technologist to be seen...
>>
>>
>> https://www.fcc.gov/general/intergovernmental-advisory-committee-current-members
>>
>> --
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Tmvv5jJKs Epik Mellon Podcast
>> Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
>> _______________________________________________
>> Nnagain mailing list
>> Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
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