FCC is trying to hide Net Neutrality Comments

Harikrishna MekalaAugust 23, 201701.1K views

The FCC has declined to publish the text of most neutrality objections despite a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) application that required for all complaints filed since June 2015. The FCC has granted 1,000 charges to the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), which smoothed the public records request but said last month that it’s too “difficult” to redact individually identifiable information from all 47,000.

Today, 16 organizations wrote a letter asking the FCC to issue all the charges so they can be examined by the public before the committee concludes a plan to demolish the 2015 net neutrality rules. “The FCC has abandoned to make critical evidence ready for public review and comment,” they wrote to Pai and the other four administrators.

When in a talk with News today, an FCC spokesperson said the committee will release the objections “as soon as we can.”

Chairman Pai’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) argues that a shortage of formal net neutrality objections may show that the rules aren’t needed. But while there was only one legal complaint, against Verizon, tens of thousands of customers used the less difficult informal complaint process to protest about their ISPs.

Advocacy organizations wrote in today’s letter:

Customers likely use the unofficial complaint mechanism to direct harms caused by ISPs that disrupt the current bright-line Net Neutrality rules and transparency rules. Over 47,000 customer complaints have been presented against ISPs since June 2015, and carriers produced approximately 18,000 answers to those objections, and there are 1,500 emails documenting communications between the ombudsperson and Internet users. These figures alone should give the Committee’s pause. However, only a full review of these customer complaints and Ombudsperson reports will allow the public to fully explain questions posed in the NPRM.

The letter was approved by 18MillionRising.org, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Center for Media Justice, the Center for Rural Strategies, Color of Change, Common Cause, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Native Public Media, New America’s Open Technology Institute, OpenMedia, Popular Resistance, Public Knowledge, and the United Church of Christ.

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