INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The ongoing saga over the FCC handling of public comments to its net neutrality proposal continues after The New York Times sued the
organization for withholding of information that it believes could prove there was Russian interference.
The Times has filed multiple
Freedom of Information Act requests for data on the comments since July 2017, and now, after reducing the scope of its requests
significantly was rejected, it is taking the FCC to court in a bid to get the information.
The FCC comment system keeled over in May 2017
over during the public feedback period as more than 22 million comments were posted
Plenty of those were suspected of using repeated phrases, fake email addresses and even the names of deceased New Yorkers
The FCC initially falsely claimed the outage was because it was hacked — it wasn''t and it has only just made that clear— it seems
instead that its system was unable to handle the volume of comments, witha John Oliver sketch thought to have accounted for a surge in
interest.
The New York Times, meanwhile, has been looking into whether Russia was involved
An op-ed in the Washington Post from FCC memberJessica Rosenworcel published earlier this year suggested that as many as 500,000 comments
came from Russian email addresses, with an estimated eight million comments sent by throw-away email accounts created
In addition, a report found links between emails mentioned in theMueller Report and those used to provide comment on net neutrality.
Net
neutrality activists, not hackers, crashed the FCC comment system
Since the actual events are unclear — for more than a year the FCC
allowed people to incorrectly believe it was hacked — an FOIA request could provide a clearer insight into whether there was overseas
interference.
Problem: the FCC itself won''t budge, as the suit (which you can find here) explains:
The request at issue in this litigation
involves records that will shed light on theextent to which Russian nationals and agents of the Russian government have interfered with the
agencynotice-and-comment process about a topic of extensive public interest: the government decision toabandon &net neutrality.&Release of
these records will help broaden the public understanding of thescope of Russian interference in the American democratic system.
Despite the
clear public importance of the requested records, the FCC has thrownup a series of roadblocks, preventing The Times from obtaining the
documents.
Repeatedly, The Times has narrowed its request in the hopes of expeditingrelease of the records so it could explore whether the
FCC and the American public had been the victimof orchestrated campaign by the Russians to corrupt the notice-and-comment process and
undermine animportant step in the democratic process of rule-making.
The original FOIA request lodged in June 2017 from the Times requested
&IP addresses, timestamps, and comments, among otherdata& which included web server data
The FCC initially bulked and declined on the basis that doing so would compromise its IT systems and security (that sounds familiar!), while
it also cited privacy concerns for the commenters.
Over the proceeding months, which included dialogue between both parties, the Times pared
back the scope of its request considerably.By 31 August 2018, it was only seeking a list of originating IP addresses and timestamps for
comments, and a list of user-agent headers (which show a user browser type and other diagnostic details) and timestamps
The requested lists were separated to address security concerns.
However, the FCC declined again, and now the Times believes it has
&exhausted all administrative remedies.
The FCC has no lawful basis for declining to release the records requested,& it added.
FCC admits
it was never actually hacked
Not so, according to the FCC, which released a statement to Ars Technica.
We are disappointed that The New
York Times has filed suit to collect the Commission internal Web server logs, logs whose disclosure would put at jeopardy the Commission IT
security practices for its Electronic Comment Filing System,& a spokesperson said.
The organization cited aDistrict of Columbia case earlier
this month which it claimedfound that ''the FCC need not turn over these same web server logs under the Freedom of Information Act.
But that
is a simplistic read on the case
While the judge did rule against turning over server logs, he ordered the FCC to provide email addresses for those that had provided comment
via its .CSV file template, and the files themselves
That a decent precedent for the New York Times, which has a far narrow scope with itsrequest.
