The FCC conducts notice-and-comment rulemaking and is accountable to a public interest standard. Obviously the public interest can be hard to define, but at minimum, if reasonable comments on the record raise issues that we are clearly ignoring, this is likely to emerge in item debate, dissenting statements, and the press. In fact, the courts can go as far as overturning a rule if the FCC failed to adequately address arguments made on the record during the rulemaking process. A lot of our rulemaking is technical and not of general interest, but the public has the right to comment on all of it.
In this particular case, I think the much of the relevant experience and expertise resides with the public more than the federal government. A lot of tech workers are very upset with the current state of IoT security and with the US Government's actions or lack thereof, so if we get a lot of comments on the records about specifics, those will be hard to brush off.
Link for general reference: https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/rulemaking-process
I'm a well-informed, active citizen, and I didn't realize that. It might help to explain how that works - how do public comments influence things? My concern would have been that it depends on the FCC, and that comments could be included or ignored as desired, and probably the latter. (I want to emphasize: That would have been my concern had I not read this thread - I trust they are influential).
Thank you!