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The ongoing saga about the FCC's treatment of public comment on its proposed neutrality of the internet continues after the New York Times sued the organization for having withheld information that it believed could prove that there was Russian interference.
The Times has filed several Freedom of Information requests since July 2017, and now, after significantly reducing the scope of its requests, the Court has been sued for this information.
The FCC comment system ended in May 2017 during the public comment period, with more than 22 million comments posted. Many of them were suspected of using repeated sentences, fake e-mail addresses and even the names of the deceased New Yorkers. The FCC initially incorrectly claimed that the failure was due to hacking – this was not the case and this has just been clarified – it seems rather that his system was not able to handle the volume of comments, with a sketch of John Oliver for a renewed interest.
The New York Times, meanwhile, asked if Russia was involved. Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the FCC and a member of the FCC published earlier this year, suggested that 500,000 comments came from Russian email addresses, and that eight million comments were sent through disposable email accounts created via FakeMailGenerator.com In addition, a report found links between e-mails mentioned in the Mueller report and those used to provide comments on network neutrality.
Since the actual events are unclear – for more than a year, the FCC has allowed people to falsely believe that it was hacked – a FOIA request could give a clearer idea of the presence possible interference abroad.
Problem: The FCC itself does not move, because the combination (which you can find here) explains:
The claim at issue concerns cases that will shed light on the extent to which Russian nationals and agents of the Russian Government hindered the agency's process of notification and comment on a matter of significant public interest: Government "Neutrality of the Internet". The publication of these documents will help the public to better understand the extent of Russian interference in the American democratic system.
Despite the obvious public importance of the requested documents, the FCC has put in place a series of obstacles, preventing The Times from obtaining the documents.
The Times has repeatedly reduced its demand in the hopes of speeding up the release of the files to determine whether the FCC and the American public had been victims of a campaign orchestrated by the Russians to corrupt the notice process and comments and undermine an important step in the democratic process of rule-making.
The June 2017 FOIA's initial request by the Times called for "IP addresses, timestamps and comments, among other data," which included data from the Web server. The FCC initially grouped and declined because it would compromise its computer systems and security (this sounds familiar!), While citing privacy concerns for commentators.
In the following months, which included a dialogue between the two parties, the Times dramatically reduced the scope of its request. As of August 31, 2018, it was only looking for a list of IP addresses and original timestamps for comments, as well as a list of user headers (indicating the browser type of a user and other diagnostic details) and timestamps. The requested lists have been separated to address security issues.
However, the FCC has declined again, and the Times now considers that it has "exhausted all administrative remedies".
"The FCC has no legal basis for refusing to publish the requested documents," the statement added.
Not so, according to the FCC, which issued a statement to Ars Technica.
"We are disappointed that the New York Times has taken action to collect logs from the Commission's internal web server, newspapers whose disclosure would jeopardize the Commission's computer security practices for its electronic filing system." , said a spokesman.
The organization cited a case of the District of Columbia earlier this month, according to which, according to her, "the FCC does not need to provide these same web server logs under the Freedom of Information Act. ".
But it's a simplistic reading on the case. Although the judge decided not to deliver the server logs, he ordered the FCC to provide email addresses to those who provided comments via his .CSV file template and the files themselves. This is a decent precedent for the New York Times, whose scope is very narrow.
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