FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Cancels CES 2018 Appearance
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has dropped his plan to guest at next week's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Agency sources reportedly said that Pai canceled his scheduled appearance after getting death threats.
Pai was supposed to appear in this year's CES as a guest on Tuesday, Jan. 9, according to The Verge. On stage, he was supposed to take part, along with FTC's current acting chair Maureen Ohlhausen, in a roundtable interview moderated by Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association.
The FCC reportedly did not give notice of Pai's cancellation, instead, they left it to the CTA to announce Pai's absence. "Unfortunately, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is unable to attend CES 2018," the agency said via a short email.
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"We look forward to our next opportunity to host a technology policy discussion with him before a public audience," the message from the CTA continued. A representative from the agency would later confirm that Ohlhausen and Shapiro will still be attending, minus the FCC chairman.
On Thursday, Jan. 4, Recode reported that two agency sources, presumably from the FCC, claimed that Pai canceled his upcoming CES 2018 appearance due to threats on his life. If this proves accurate, this incident looks to be a rerun of the earlier incident where the FCC chairman postponed the net neutrality vote earlier in December 2017.
The controversial vote, which was supposed to remove the U.S. government net neutrality rules, was scrapped after a bomb threat.
This time, the nature of the threats against Pai was not yet revealed. A representative for the FCC chairman would only say that "we do not comment on security measures or concerns," as he explained on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Consumer Technology Association also declined to comment about these reported threats on Pai's well-being.
Shapiro himself would only venture that "He and his family have been subject to vicious and direct attacks and threats and any decision he makes regarding his own travel is fine with me," he said, referring to Pai.
"I may not agree with him on every issue, but he is a brilliant and committed public servant," he added, as quoted by Digital Trends.
