UPDATE The FCC denied the New York Attorney General’s Office request for help in determining the source of faked comments in the Commission’s Net Neutrality docket. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman earlier said the agency has the email source logs that can help identify the source of as many as eight million bogus comments out of more than 21 million.
The agency will not hand over anything, FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson told Schneiderman in a letter on Thursday, because he offered no proof that the public comment process was “corrupted,” as Schneiderman claimed. Johnson also questioned Schneiderman’s authority to investigate a federal agency’s rulemaking process, reported The Hill.
Schneiderman went public with his quest, after saying the agency rejected several earlier requests for help with the issue. In response last week, a spokeswoman for his office said it’s clear the Commission “will continue to obstruct a law enforcement investigation. “It’s easy for the FCC to claim that there’s no problem with the process, when they’re hiding the very information that would allow us to determine if there was a problem.”
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who supported Schneiderman’s efforts during a press conference last week, said Johnson’s letter “shows the FCC’s sheer contempt for public input and unreasonable failure to support integrity in its process.” Chairman Ajit Pai has consistently said the Commission is focused on the substance of public comments filed in a proceeding, not on a number. Indeed, Johnson said in the letter: “The Commission does not make policy decisions merely by tallying the comments on either side of a proposal to determine what position has greater support, nor does it attribute greater weight to comments based on the submitter’s identity.”
December 11, 2017
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